LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
8|ap..h^i. MsppW ^o 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 




£HlH# t 




HELIOTYPE PRINTING CO. BOSTON. 



a jttemonal 



O. W. WIGHT, A.M., M.D. 

SANITARIAN, LAWYER, AND AUTHOR 



J. S. WIGHT, M.D. 







V^ 



CAMBRIDGE 
Print** at t&e Htoermiie Press 



I5Q0 



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THE LIBRARY]] 

OF CONGRESS [' 

WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1890, 
By J. S. WIGHT. 

All rights reserved. 



To the members of the Prismatic Club of Detroit 
this Memorial is inscribed, in appreciation of their 
regard and friendship for one who labored for the 
good of others, who lived a manly and heroic life, 
who went away without fear. 



Es bildet ein Talent sich in der Stille, Dock ein Cha- 
racter in dem Strom der Welt. — Goethe. 

Talent develops itself in solitude j character, in the 
stream of life. 



PREFACE. 



This biographical memorial of my de- 
ceased brother, I have written for his 
friends. I have tried to paint what he 
was in his ambition, his work, and his 
success, during the changes of a varied 
life. My few and inadequate words have 
been inspired by a wish to perpetuate his 
memory among those who knew him. And 
if those who did not know him, happen to 
read of him, as his life appeared to me, 
let me say to them, — it is our wish that 
you, too, may be numbered among his 
friends. 

J. S. WIGHT. 

30 SCHERMEKHORN STREET. 

Brooklyn, N. Y. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 



On the 19th of February, in the year of 
our Lord 1824, was born a boy whose an- 
cestors came from two branches of the Aryan 
race. One occupies a land where men of 
indomitable will and dauntless courage re- 
sist the encroachments of the sea and hold 
back the invasions of man. They have en- 
countered the aggressive and stubborn forces 
of nature and turned them into slaves. 
They have maintained their existence as a 
nation for more than a thousand years. The 
other lived on an island against whose shore 
beats forever the restless sea, imparting the 
spirit of its mobility to the beholder. Upon 
this sea-girt land was planted the standard 
of Imperial Rome, as westward the march of 



2 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

Empire took its way. And this beautiful 
island has stood sentinel at the gateway of 
civilization for centuries. The people of 
whom we write have lived and wrought by 
the sea in the past, and have descended from 
the ancient mariner, of whom the Roman 
poet sang : — 

" In oak or triple brass his breast was mailed, 
Who first committed to the ruthless deep 
His fragile bark, nor inly shrank and quailed, 
To hear the headlong south-wind fiercely sweep, 
With northern blasts to wrestle and to rave ; 
Nor feared to face the tristful Hyades, 
And the wild tyrant of the western wave, 
That lifts or calms at will the restless sea." 

Both the ancestors of this boy committed 
their fragile barks to the ruthless deep ; 
they had heard the headlong south-wind 
wrestle with the northern blasts ; they had 
hearts of oak and breasts in dauntless cour- 
age mailed ; they loved and sought the free- 
dom of the restless sea ; nor feared the 
peril and the dangers that it brought and 
gave. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 3 

Such were the ancestors of one whose 
life it is our duty to sketch. Such brave 
men were they, who have lived, and loved, 
and wrought, and passed away. And he 
too has departed, after a busy, heroic, man- 
ly, and eventful life, over which falls the 
shadow of a great sorrow : — 

" One fatal remembrance, one sorrow that throws 
Its bleak shade alike o'er our joys and our woes, 
To which life nothing darker or brighter can bring, 
For which joy hath no balm and affliction no sting." 

His mother's paternal ancestors came 
from Amsterdam, Holland. There were two 
brothers, by the name of Van Buren, who 
came to this country, and settled on the 
Hudson, one at Albany, the other at Kin- 
derhook. The latter was the ancestor of 
Martin Yan Buren, who was President of 
the United States. The former was the 
ancestor of Caroline Yan Buren, the mother 
of Orlando Williams Wight, who was the 
eldest of eight children. His father was a 
descendant of Thomas Wight, who >came to 
this country, in 1635, from the Isle of Wight, 



4 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

to escape the religious persecutions of the 
times. When the Romans invaded Britain, 
they landed on a small island off the coast 
of England. And for some reason they 
called this island by the name of Yectis. 
It may be that the Romans derived this 
name from the more ancient one of Ictis. 
This sea-girt land is the modern Isle of 
Wight, whose name is probably related to 
the Danish Wightgar. 

O. W. Wight was born at Centreville, 
Alleghany County, New York, among the 
hills, in the native forest. The dew, the 
rain, and the snow fell there, as they have 
fallen for centuries. They seemed to have 
grown weary of the savage, since they came 
down with a new joy for civilized man. 
The birds sang to the echo of the axe, which 
leveled the beech and maple, so that corn 
and wheat could grow. The winds made 
music with the splinters of the logs laid up 
in the walls of the cabin. The sun shone 
into the clearing at mid-day, and played 
with the shadows of the trees in the morning 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 5 

and the evening. And oft there was stillness 
there like that of the primeval sea, which 
once lay above this fair land. Here, where 
man and nature could meet, and mingle 
the mysterious life of one and the sentient 
soul of the other, he first saw the light, — 
the first consciousness of being came to a 
new-born soul, that was overshadowed by 
the mysteries of the forests, the clouds, and 

the stars. 

"'Tis not in man, 
To look unmoved upon that heaving waste, 
Which, from horizon to horizon spread, 
Meets the o'erarching heavens on every side, 
Blending their hues in distant faintness there, 

" 'Tis wonderful ! — and yet, my boy, just such 
Is life. Life is a sea as fathomless, 
As wide, as terrible, and yet, sometimes, 
As calm and beautiful. The light of heaven 
Smiles on it ; and 't is decked with every hue 
Of glory and of joy. Anon dark clouds 
Arise ; contending winds of fate go forth ; — 
And hope sits weeping o'er a general wreck. 

" And thou must sail upon this sea, a long, 
Eventful voyage. The wise may suffer wreck, 
The foolish must." 



b MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

What one has he may give to many, and 
from many comes what he has, in body, 
mind, and soul. Our piety, our religion, 
our poetry, our oratory, our weakness, our 
strength, come from our ancestors. A thou- 
sand streams of life are blended into one, 
which diverges more and more as time goes 
on. Surely we enter into the labors of 
others, and we give of the fruits of our toil 
to those who come after us. While you can- 
not gather figs from thistles, some fig trees 
bear better fruit than others. One child is 
facile at learning, because his ancestors were 
learned before him. He seems to inherit 
his knowledge, just as if he could unfold 
the convolutions of his brain, and read the 
imprint of a long line of culture. Yet the 
laws of heredity will not explain everything 
in man. Somehow, there is a new creation, 
— a new miracle, — taking place at every 
new birth. Shape it as we will, to receive, 
to transmit, to become, to be born, are co- 
related to the Creative Power. The amazing 
faculties of Socrates came down with the 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 7 

Promethean fires ; the transcendent genius 
of Michael Angelo was a heavenly gift ; the 
matchless mind of the Bard of Avon was a 
divine insight. Converge all the influences 
of heredity into one stream, and it is insig- 
nificant when compared with the creative 
shaping of the destiny of man. 



II. 

The small boy when he first goes to 
school is environed with mysteries. He 
leaves the home where his mother dwells. 
The distance to the schoolhouse is impres- 
sive. He goes forth on an unknown and 
untried journey. A mysterious future lies 
beyond his vision. The clouds that shape 
themselves and go ; the winds that sigh 
among the leaves ; the tints of spring that 
please the sense of seeing ; the singing of 
the forest birds ; and the pleasant light of 
the sun, are all interwoven into memories 
which cannot fade. It is a beautiful path- 
way to the temple of knowledge. How dif- 
ferent this journey to those who make it ! 
One is born for and lives in the material : 
to such there are no stepping-stones to 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 9 

higher things. Another hungers and thirsts 
for the water and bread of the spirit : the 
eyes see the beauty that shines through 
perishable forms, and the ears hear the 
music that swells from the spheres. One 
would escape from the temple of knowledge, 
as from a prison. The other would listen, 
and gaze, and learn forever. The perpe- 
tuity of our freedom, our liberty, our happi- 
ness, and our prosperity is consolidated and 
made more certain through the rudiments of 
knowledge obtained in the schoolhouse by 
the wayside. The dignity and the solemnity 
of this temple are none the less because it 
is built of primeval logs. 

The schoolboy subsequently wrote of one 
who became the great logical knight-errant 
of the tenth century : " Thou dost not yet 
know the cost of wisdom ; other years shall 
teach thee that it must be paid for in the 
fusion of the brain, over the burning of the 
heart. And what if a vase of ashes shall 
at length take the place of thy heart, and 
1* 



10 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

thy brain congeal to stone ! With thee, also, 
fate opens an account ; take what thou wilt, 
but payment thou shalt not escape, even to 
the uttermost farthing. Choose thy princi- 
ples of action, but know that thou must 
abide the results." 

From picture-books and story-books the 
boy soon went beyond the learning of his 
teachers: he was one of those who enter 
into the learning of others, — they who have 
traveled the journey before us. Then he 
studied geometry, surveying, and the calcu- 
lus without a master. After that he turned 
his attention to Latin and Greek, and, with 
no one to aid him, he acquired a profound 
and critical knowledge of the classical au- 
thors. The Iliad and the Odyssey kept 
him up far into the night. They made an 
impression that often made itself known in 
the productions of his pen in after years. 
This influence on the minds of men is ex- 
pressed by Lang : — 

" Homer, thy song men liken to the sea, 
With every note of music in its tone, 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 11 

With tides that wash the dim dominion 
Of Hades, and light waves that laugh in glee 
Around the isles enchanted : nay, to me 

Thy verse seems as the River of source unknown 

That glasses Egypt's temples overthrown, 
In his sky-nurtured stream, eternally. 
No wiser we than men of heretofore 

To find thy mystic fountains guarded fast ; 
Enough — thy flood makes green our human shore 

As Nilus, Egypt, rolling down his vast, 
His fertile waters, murmuring evermore 

Of gods dethroned and empires of the Past." 

Why should life all labor be? — When 
other boys were at play, he was with his 
books. In the hours that were precious for 
sleep he was wont to read, to study, to learn. 
He did the measure of a day's work some- 
times in half a day, and the reward was 
that he could use the remainder of the day 
in translating the ^Eneid. He would work 
a few hours, and then engage in the solu- 
tion of some difficult mathematical problem. 
The days came and departed, — as " knowl- 
edge grew from more to more." His am- 
bition kindled into enthusiasm, as the stu- 



12 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

dent made praiseworthy and substantial 
progress. There was a wish to know and 
be known, and be remembered in the here- 
after. There was a desire to impart the 
treasures of knowledge to others, an am- 
bition to become a teacher. 

One of the most mournful spectacles in 
the world is that of a man trying to teach 
others something which he himself does not 
know. And next to this stands the picture 
of genius laboring to impart divine truths 
that are above the comprehension of his 
pupils. Rare and wonderful gift to put life 
and soul into words, and let fall the instruc- 
tive and informing sounds upon listening 
and attentive ears ! It is a divine gift, 
greater than all other gifts, to teach others 
the truth, whether in the temple of worship 
or in the temple of learning : and no man 
can teach the truth who does not know what 
the truth is, — no, not one. Who has not 
fused his knowledge in his brain, who has 
not enthroned his wisdom in his heart, is, in 
speech, a voice and nothing more. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 13 

He wrote : " I am weary and - depressed 
to-night. What a wasting drudgery is this 
teaching business ! Some of my pupils are 
bright and active, and are grateful to him 
who instructs them ; others are stupid and 
cruel, and delight in giving pain. To main- 
tain something like order among thirty or 
forty boys and girls, wild and strong, urg- 
ing each other to mischief, some of whom 
scarcely know what it means to obey, is a 
sore task, requiring firmness, skill, and cour- 
age. I have to-day been thinking of the 
past, and feel weary of life. Where will it 
all end ? Are the powers that govern the 
world beneficent or malignant ? What a 
strange mixture of good and evil in life ! I 
am fated to grow weary, teaching these half 
barbarians the merest rudiments of know- 
ledge, while others are born in purple and 
are destined to be rulers of men. I do not 
know what it all means, and when the mys- 
tery of things present drives me to things 
past, then tristes souvenirs mock me with 
the phantoms of blessed hours gone by. 



14 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

If somebody could but understand me, it 
would be a relief to utter the thoughts of 
my soul ; but here all are material, and I 
am alone." 



. III. 

A wise man once said, If you ask me 
what time is, I don't know ; but if you don't 
ask me, I know what it is. Day after day, 
year after year, age after age, time passes 
away. It seems like some great system re- 
volving noiselessly around a mighty centre, 
whose substance we call eternity. The past 
converges into the present, and the pres- 
ent expands into the future. We measure 
time by the rotation and the revolution of 
the earth, — amazing journey that we make 
around the sun ! We count time by the 
events that crowd into the present, where a 
thousand causes converge into one historic 
effect after another. Each one of us stands 
and moves in the present, for eternity is be- 
hind us and before us. 

In the year 1840, the studious boy, the 



16 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

young schoolmaster, with his father's family, 
migrated from the woods and hills of Al- 
leghany to the slopes and shore of Lake 
Erie, where a farm was purchased. To 
others it was a place where shelter, food, and 
raiment could be had ; to him it was some- 
thing more : the mobility and the expanse of 
the inland sea awakened in the soul the idea 
of the Infinite. Step by step one climbs to 
a higher level, and then the imagination 
speeds beyond the horizon : at last, the limi- 
tations are reached ; and when the mind re- 
turns to the order of things around us, it has 
a new thought, — an inspiration of the har- 
mony going through all things created. 

" Lovely is the autumn on the borders of 
the great lakes in North America ! The air 
is so clear, the heaven is so high, the south- 
ward moving sun sheds over land and water 
such a rich mellow light ! Day by day 
grow more golden the fading leaves that 
should be emblematic of a soul ripening to- 
ward the grave in wisdom. Earth seems so 
calm, so gravely joyous, waiting with a sober 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 17 

melancholy smile to be shrouded with a robe 
of snow, that shall be folded over her bosom 
by the cold hand of winter." 

Look at it as we will, the things that sur- 
round us work in the soul for good or for 
evil. There is one music in the trees; there 
is one song in the waters ; there is one voice 
in the winds : and the voice, the song, the 
music change ceaselessly, and awaken new 
thoughts, new sentiments, new aspirations, 
which also change, and remind us that 
change itself seems to be eternal, — all 
things change " from form to form ; they 
melt like mists, the solid lands, like clouds 
they shape themselves and go." A new 
meaning is impressed on life : the sun shines 
with another light; the heaven has deeper 
mysteries ; the soul has a deeper insight. 
The expanse grows higher, deeper, wider : a 
vista opens to another expanse that lies be- 
yond sense. On the scroll of the universe 
God has indeed written a revelation of him- 
self, and has given us eyes to read it, and 
reason to comprehend it : blessed is he who 
has eyes to see and reason to understand. 



18 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

" Wisdom and spirit of the universe ! 
Thou soul that art the eternity of thought, 
That givest to forms and images a breath 
And everlasting motion, not in vain, 
By day or star-light thus from my first dawn 
Of childhood, didst thou intertwine for me 
The passions that build up our human soul ; 
Not with the mean and vulgar words of man, 
But with high objects, with enduring things — 
With life and nature, purifying thus 
The elements of feeling and of thought, 
And sanctifying, by such discipline, 
Both pain and fear, until we recognize 
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart. 
Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me 
With limited kindness. In November days 
When vapors rolling down the valley made 
A lonely scene more lonesome, among woods, 
At noon and 'midst the calm of summer nights, 
When, by the margin of the trembling lake, 
Beneath gloomy hills homeward I went, 
In solitude, such intercourse was mine ; 
Mine was it in the fields both day and night, 
And by the waters, all the summer long." 

" In those first days of solitude, I was 
comparatively happy. My aching heart was 
stirred gently by the loving voice of Nature, 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 19 

and I gave myself up to the delusion that 
could make me forget the past. Charming 
was that bower by the lake-side. It was 
a bower constructed by the hand of Na- 
ture herself. Thickly interlocked were the 
branches of the maple, the beech, and the 
hemlock. The evergreen was there, like an 
emblem of immortality, in the early autum- 
nal decay. The golden leaves were slowly 
and solemnly falling around me, writing, 
as it were, with the pen of Time, in the air 
and upon the ground, 'passing away.' A 
brook tumbled from rock to rock down the 
steep, high bank, and mingled its waters 
with those of the great lake ; thus headlong 
runs the stream of individual life into the 
shoreless, unfathomable sea of eternity. In 
the midst of the bower, here and there, still 
bloomed a solitary flower, proclaiming that, 
in the autumn of old age, few are the joys 
that survive the spring-time of youth. When, 
at the close of day, the dark red sun hung 
like a great ball of celestial fire, just ready 
to sink into the lake, whose further margin 



20 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

was beyond the vision's reach, I seemed for 
a moment to pass into another condition of 
being, — the earth receded beneath me ; the 
heavens opened above me ; with closed eyes 
I could see far-off winding shores of seas; 
I could feel the multitudinous, soft watery 
arms of the deep-hearted ocean embrace in 
loving sympathy the land, and could hear 
the murmur of countless voices in a thou- 
sand nameless cities of man." 

Why need we linger to tell about school 
days, which were so few and short ? He did, 
indeed, attend brief terms : at Pike Acad- 
emy, Wyoming ; and at Westfield Academy, 
Chautauqua. But for the most part, he was 
his own teacher, his own preceptor, and his 
own master ; he was self-taught, and became 
a self-made man. In the end, ceaseless toil 
and study brought the reward for which he 
longed. Nameless and forgotten hours of 
the night have vanished, while the silent 
stars kept watch over his fiery spirit. The 
intervening years pass swiftly by, like the 
shadow of a cloud. Intense and persistent 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 21 

study, earnest and sincere toil, views and 
visions of things animate and inanimate, 
seem to crush years into moments. And 
from their passionate and receding cycle 
the outlook widens. As he has often said 
and written, the Temples of Worship and 
Knowledge have been built in the East. 
Towards its fabled lands trend the ways 
which lead to these temples, standing in the 
sacred dust of centuries. 

O. W. Wight is now twenty-one years of 
age. He assumes control of himself. He 
will make his way in the world. He is not 
at home any longer on the slopes and shore 
of Lake Erie. He said good-by to his kin- 
dred ; turned his face toward the mystic 
lands of the East, and left his boyhood's 
home, as it were, a pleasant dream in the 
past. " What magic there is in the word 
8 home ' ! It unlocks the heart that refuses 
to yield to any other key. The place where 
one was born is above all others a conse- 
crated spot for him upon earth. When 
sickness comes, our thoughts wander to the 



22 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

scenes of our childhood, and we remember 
the hand that rocked us in the hour of help- 
lessness. When old age overtakes us we 
wish to return to our birthplace to die ; and 
and do we not call heaven a home ! ■ 



IV. 

The last words were spoken, and the wan- 
derer was fast leaving the familiar shore. 
He sat apart thinking of the days of youth 
gone by, of the oft -repeated story of ma- 
ternal grief, and of the unknown future yet 
to be. While he thought, the sombre day 
wore on ; the dusky shore fast faded from 
his view ; like Homer's heroes, he was on 
the deep. Through all that long and weary 
night, in sleepless solitude, he went east- 
ward under the burden of hopes to be ful- 
filled. At last " the gray dawn came, and 
1 lying low ' in the distance was the town of 
Buffalo, like the shore of Italy when first 
seen by the wandering iEneas. The beauti- 
ful inland city was soon reached. Buffalo 
is a little New York, standing on a pocket 
edition of the sea." 



24 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

Two days in Buffalo : There was seen 
the scramble for the golden apple, as in 
the Grecian fable. Figuratively, gold was 
strewn in the dust of the street, where men 
rushed after it, crowding, wounding, and 
often destroying each other. And it seemed 
a kind of madness, whose delirium was con- 
tagious, and impelled the beholder to flee 
away into solitude. But the world will 
not let one off on such easy terms : it is a 
grim reality; with it we must wrestle; it 
may be a satisfaction to see through it with 
the questioning intellect ; but that will not 
suffice. Sublime thoughts will not weave 
nature's fibres into clothing ; subtle expla- 
nations of Grecian myths will not feed the 
hungry. Mother Earth is more than a poet : 
she will have you toil ; she gives the bread 
of life here ; she incloses the useless idler 
decently out of sight in her cold bosom. 

" The time will come when you will see 
something more than a scramble after golden 
apples in the busy life of cities. Your heart 
is too cold, — wait awhile, and everywhere 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 25 

you will see a toiling brother. Suffering 
you have already known, — you are not the 
only sufferer; you will be unjust in your 
judgments until you interpret life with heart 
as well as brain. The dear God above you 
sees all, and feels for all. Think you that 
He looks upon the struggle and toil of his 
children here below as a delirious scramble 
for gold in the dust of the highway ? But 
onward : we will follow you ; and doubtless 
you will soon learn more of this solemn 
world, every pulse of which shall have its 
echo in eternity." 

In the presence of the Falls of Niagara : 
The thought of finite power merged into the 
idea of power that is infinite ; a belief in the 
All- Powerful led to a belief in the Supreme 
intelligence and goodness ; and the attempt 
to construe the God of the universe to 
thought induced a doubt ; but Doubt 
brought the beholder face to face with 
Evidence, found in the rocks, in the so- 
lar system, in the stars, in the eternal 
order of the universe, — and to doubt was to 
2 



26 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

reason, and to reason was to admit its con- 
clusions ; and these led by imperceptible de- 
grees to assent as to the truth of what was 
at first denied. Through Nature, the first 
and ever-present revelation, we may reach 
the Creator, the Ruler, the Forgiver, the 
Comforter, for whom the needy heart of man 
yearns. Before the mighty waterfall, as 
suggestive of sublime thought as the sky- 
piercing, snow-crowned Alps, the soul bowed 
in humility in the presence of Him whose 
will upholds all worlds. And then the 
Fates impel onward again : " There is no 
father's house for you here ; the .little money 
in your purse is vanishing; you are home- 
less and a stranger ; the universal needs of 
humanity will soon be felt, and upon your- 
self alone is sure to fall the responsibility of 
your own life." 

Who can tell what a man feels, better 
than he can himself ? Who can know what 
a man thinks, as well as he can who thinks ? 
The real in feeling and thought is sometimes 
more interesting and precious than the deeds 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 27 

of men and heroes. Let a man tell us truly 
what he thinks, and we will listen. Let him 
relate sincerely to us how he feels, and we 
are moved. The story and the romance of 
Biography are truer, more real and interest- 
ing-, when they come from the heart and 
brain of the one who lives them. If there 
is one thing that stands high in our admira- 
tion, it is the priceless jewel of sincerity, — 
for it will restore confidence among men. 
And if there is one thing above all others 
desirable, it is the fearless gem of truth, — 
for the truth will make us free. If the 
best feelings and thoughts of the great, the 
wise, and the good were gathered up, and re- 
corded by the pen of genius, and portrayed 
in printer's ink, it would be matter for the 
reconstruction of universal history. 

Mr. Wight again teaches school, — and 
reads Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress, 
leaving us the following impressions : " I 
have just finished reading Milton's Paradise 
Lost. Height is the word that comes to me 
first. . . . The poem itself is . . . theology 



28 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

in lofty verse. I do not find in it the nat- 
ural, unsought sublimity of Homer, nor the 
graceful splendor of Yirgil; yet it has in 
an unusual degree the true epic verve. . . . 
The idea of created intelligences revolting in 
heaven against the Almighty, and waging 
with Him a fierce civil war, in order to get 
possession of the throne of the universe, is 
sublimely ridiculous. If, with some of the 
Orientals, we could believe in the coexist- 
ence of good and evil, a systematic warfare 
between their representatives would be a 
conception worthy of a great poet. But 
when . . . evil originated with a created, 
finite, dependent being, then to place that 
weak being in antagonism with his own Om- 
nipotent Creator is to forsake the regions of 
the sublime, and descend from the epic to 
the melodramatic. Take the idea of a weak 
and ignorant creature revolting, because 
weak and ignorant, against eternal power 
and wisdom, and follow up that creature with 
divine goodness and infinite pity, then you 
will have an idea worthy of a great Chris- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 29 

tian poet. The epics of Paganism, and the 
epics of the Transition have been written, 
but the epics of Christianity have yet to be 
made. 

" Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress has in- 
flamed me to such a degree that it spoils my 
sleep at nights. Bunyan is a rural Milton, 
a real Cromwell among poets. . . . There is 
a beat of Bunyan's strong heart in every 
word he writes. Oh, what power there is 
in language that is ensouled with the entire 
conviction of him who writes it ! " 



O. W. Wight was principal of Geneva 
Academy for a time. He made for himself 
the reputation of being a successful teacher. 
While there he was a thorough and compre- 
hensive student of history. He admired the 
literature, the culture, and the poetry of an- 
cient Greece. He was a diligent student 
of the literature and laws of the Romans. 
About this time he wrote a small work of 
fiction, that seems to have entirely vanished. 
Most authors are glad to have their first lit- 
erary efforts forgotten: he was not an ex- 
ception. 

From Geneva he went by way of Albany 
to New York. Poor in worldly goods, moved 
by ambition, having high aims, with little 
experience, agitated by anxiety, not under, 
standing the feelings that stirred his breast, 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 31 

exploring the new wonders that incessantly 
arose, but drawn toward the East, — the 
land of religion, song, and philosophy, — he 
first gazed on the great city he had so long 
desired to see, an interminable chaos of 
ships and buildings spread out under a hazy 
atmosphere, that seemed to his heated imag 
ination, to be the thick breath of some shape 
less monster, which the troubled ocean had 
thrown upon the shore. What was he to do 
there ? Should he be swallowed up and lost, 
like a thousand others, to satisfy the hunger 
of that veritable monster? 

Years ago his ancestors sailed up the 
peaceful waters of the Hudson to find a 
home where nature and fortune smiled in 
unison. They had journeyed westward ; a 
descendant was facing the east. He was 
landing on an island which lies where the 
contending waters of the Atlantic and the 
Hudson have met and wrestled for unnum- 
bered centuries. Here has arisen a great 
city into whose currents of life converge the 
good and the bad, the wise and the foolish, 



32 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

the learned and the ignorant, the Christian 
and the Pagan, the rich and the poor, those 
who love and those who hate, those who help 
and those who cast down, those who rejoice 
and those who are unhappy, — here, like the 
waters of the river and the sea, contend the 
forces of good and evil. Into this confusion 
of egoistic and altruistic life the new comer 
disappears. 

" A certain Samuel Johnson and one Wil- 
liam Shakespeare were adventurers. A few 
years ago a presumptuous young man, called 
Daniel Webster, appeared in the refined 
city of Boston, from the backwoods of New 
Hampshire, thinking to make his way in 
the world. He too was an adventurer. 
How many other adventurers the good-for- 
nothing world holds in remembrance ! To 
be tenderly and silently pitied is that man 
who applies the word as a term of reproach 
to struggling and aspiring genius." 

Awhile arise reminiscences of fragments 
of conversations held long years ago, from 
time to time, — conversations touching upon 
facts in a strangely varied life ; facts that 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 33 

have been recorded in the book of Destiny ; 
these facts are not altogether in their logical 
order, but the impressions they made are 
facts, graven in the memory that holds them 
dear and sacred, as faithful pictures of their 
grim realities. But they may be none the 
less interesting, because they have been fused 
and transformed in the brain of another : 
their impressions bring pain and grief, re- 
gret and admiration, satisfaction and praise. 
Cruel fortune, thou hast no divine pity, no 
infinite love ! Thy sinewy hand can break 
down or build up ; thy cold breath can freeze 
the fairest flowers ; thy smile can bring sun- 
shine and plenty into desert places ; thy hard 
foot can crush the highest and brightest 
hopes ; thy dark form can overshadow the 
most laudable ambition ; thy gifts and favors 
can raise up those who fall. These impres- 
sions were of one who set out with an imper- 
fect standard for measuring the world ; who 
did not then know how great the world was ; 
who suffered much and toiled more ; and 
who as the years vanished began to realize 

2* 



34 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

that he was setting about a mighty work ; 
that the great self-seeking world is apt to 
be indifferent ; that it is more ready to take 
than to give ; that it robs one of his purse, 
his good name, and his thoughts, without 
pity; that the lovable and the faithful are 
not easy to find ; that strangers meet us on 
every hand ; that honest bread is hard to 
get ; that the stones under our feet are cold 
and hard ; that the stars look down with the 
same sweet smile on all sorts and conditions 
of men ; that struggle and heroic toil for 
food and raiment are what the good God 
asks of us ; that we shall be clothed and fed, 
nor need be the prodigal son; and that 
great warm hearts are beating, full of God's 
eternal love, everywhere in that endless 
crowd of human beings who wander up and 
down forever. 

In the metropolis of the Western world, 
where so many human interests converge, 
Mr. Wight set out as one of the knight- 
errants of literature. He wrote tersely, 
rapidly, eloquently, and effectively for the 
" Democratic Review," the " Whig Review," 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 35 

and the current magazines. One of the 
secrets of his success was that he was in- 
tensely in earnest. Did you see a son of toil 
at work, and stop and watch him, with an 
absorbing interest and a strange fascination ? 
Did you not at some time sit and listen to a 
man of plain speech talking to those before 
him, and become so spellbound that you 
could not get away ? Was it not true that 
the son of toil was terribly in earnest, that 
the plain speaker meant every word he ut- 
tered ? The heart of one throbbed and beat 
in his work ; the heart of the other pulsated 
in his impassioned speech. He too was in 
terrible earnest, not only because he needed 
food and raiment, but also because he was 
truly ambitious for fame. 

" There rolls the deep where grew the tree, 
O Earth, what changes thou hast seen ! 
There where the long street roars hath been 
The stillness of the central sea. 

u . The hills are shadows, and they flow 

Prom form to form, and nothing stands ; 
They melt like mists, the solid lands, 
Jjike clouds they shape themselves and go." 



VI. 

" Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and soul, according well, 
May make one music as before, 
But vaster." 

The ancestor who fled from the persecu- 
tions of religion was religious. He longed 
for religious liberty, and went westward, 
from his sea-girt island, to find it. He had 
dwelt by the sea, which, as it were, beats 
forever against the breast of the beholder, 
and gives to his heart its own untamable 
energy. From the land of religion, song, 
and philosophy Freedom had taken the 
white wings of the mariner, and soared 
across the stormy and perilous ocean. It 
was there that he could worship the Maker 
of heaven and earth, in such manner as to 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 37 

bring the best accord to his own mind and 
soul. The little bark that had his all to 
have and hold and bear in safety o'er the 
sea was tossed by the wild tyrant of the 
western wave, and brought religion to a 
shore where freedom dwells. 

His descendant was also religious, and 
had been a deep student of nature. In na- 
ture he saw a revelation of the Creator. 
All nature was reverential, and mutely ap- 
pealed to man for his adoration of Him who 
all things did contrive. The God of nature 
also contrived the mind and soul of man, 
and put them in the temple of this body. 
And man is also a revelation, transcendent, 
mysterious, and wonderful. And through 
holy men, in past time, God has revealed 
much of His will and purpose. But beyond 
and above all that we can see and under- 
stand there is a mystery we cannot fathom. 
That which is and moves where sensation 
and sense cannot go, we cannot construe to 
thought. Reason sheds a clear light for a 
little way, and then we have to walk by faith. 



38 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

And faith itself comes from a light that 
shines within. It is above and beyond all 
sense and all reason, — it is the highest cre- 
ated faculty. 

" When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, 
And home to Mary's house return'd, 
Was this demanded, — if he yearn'd 
To hear her weeping by his grave ? 

" ' Where wert thou, brother, those four days ? ' 
There lives no record of reply, 
Which telling what it is to die 
Had surely added praise to praise." 

To him who rightly doubts, who wisely 
wants to know, who takes his life on trust, 
and who will accept the truth, from whatso- 
ever source it comes, and whatever garb it 
wears, more light will surely shine, — even 
if it be the inborn light of faith, and know- 
ledge will grow from more to more, and more 
of reverence in him dwell, — and his mind 
and soul will make one music as before. 
One does not dread to live, nor fear to die : 
and yet one has a nameless sense that he 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 39 

knows not how the sands of life may run, or 
how the tides may ebb and flow. He may 
set his compass right, and steer his bark to- 
ward the light that shines the clearest. He 
may have fair courage, and brave the perils 
on the wave, — if he were all alone. But 
to take others along upon the deep, dark sea 
of life, and set the sails for them when the 
light winds blow, and reef them close when 
the tempest roars, is a mighty task, so full 
of weight and care that it bends low the 
strongest spirit : — 

" Are God and Nature then at strife ? 
That Nature lends such evil dreams ? 
So careful of the type she seems, 
So careless of the single life." 

The conditions, the influences, the rela- 
tions, and the effects of the eternal law, as 
it affects the life here and the life hereafter, 
were subjected to critical and profound 
study. He who teaches the law must know 
what the law is, and must know that there 
is a Lawgiver. He must know that the 
eternal law runs through the sequence of 



40 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

spiritual things, that it is the regulator of 
the eternal order of the divine government. 
He must realize that the facts under the law 
are unchangeable as the law itself. And 
then were seen the following facts, with all 
their solemn significance : The Lawgiver 
arranged the law, so that it would have con- 
sequences. The consequences of the law 
are eternal, as the law, — which cannot be 
broken. But the law can break the one who 
goes against it, that is, the transgressor. In- 
juries to the soul are consequences that flow 
from a life contrary to the law. Yet the 
law eternal, like the law of gravitation, 
keeps on in its unchangeable course. For if 
the law is broken or changed, it from that 
moment ceases to be a law. And so that 
which has been done cannot be undone : as 
a fact, it will stand an eternal monument to 
good or evil. But yet there is justice — 
even - handed and eternal justice — that in 
eternity will make right all earthly wrongs ; 
so that no man will owe anything, — for he 
will have paid the uttermost farthing. And 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 41 

justice has a divine paternity; for as we 
know how to give good gifts, how much 
more does the infinite Father of justice know 
how to give good gifts to them that ask 
Him ? And this justice contains the soul 
of infinite pity, — the pity that is the mani- 
festation of eternal Love : such love as 
would make a man lay down his life for an- 
other. And yet there was a hope born of 
this love, and a trust enthused in the heart, 
that, in the eternity to come, evil, having a 
likeness of the ills and taints of the flesh 
and blood, would be put under the foot of 
the Conqueror : — 

" That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
That not one life shall be destroy'd, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
When God hath made the pile complete." 



VII. 

O. W. Wight taught religion for about 
three years in Newark, New Jersey, under 
the auspices of the liberal Christians. In 
addition to the labors of this office he made 
contributions to current literature, and lec- 
tured in various places. In the preceding 
chapter the general drift and tendency of his 
religious views, opinions, and beliefs for the 
time have been set forth. That his mind 
and heart were not at rest on the vital ques- 
tions of human destiny will appear more 
fully in the sequel. He had the reputation 
of being a logical, forcible, and eloquent 
speaker. The lectures he delivered before 
various societies, mostly in New England, 
made him widely and favorably known, and 
kindled anew his ambition. From this time 
on he gave his attention more to general lit- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 43 

erature. He translated M. Victor Cousin's 
work on the " History of Philosophy," which 
was published by D. Appleton and Co. The 
translation was approved by Cousin, and was 
well received by the public. A goodly num- 
ber of his countrymen rested from their pur- 
suit of material gain, and for a brief time 
contemplated a graphic picture of the few in 
the past who had made an attempt to become 
wise. 

The </>tXoo-o</)os : One sees Socrates, with 
naked feet, in summer and winter, asking 
the god who is wise, and then going from 
one reputed wise man to another, putting 
all sorts of questions to find out who was 
really wise, and when he met with those only 
who thought they had wisdom, coming to 
believe that he alone was wise, since he had 
discovered that he himself truly knew no- 
thing to speak of, for he was a veritable phi- 
losopher : this wonderful man, whom a tragic 
death helped to make immortal, was so in- 
quisitive and troublesome to his countrymen 
that they did not know what to do with 



44 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

him, and when they put him to death, they 
mourned his departure as an irreparable ca- 
lamity. One listens to the enchanting voice 
of Plato, as he walks in the garden and the 
academic groves, where he discourses on the 
nature of things, and explains the theory of 
knowledge, clothing in " winged words " the 
spirit and beauty of The Earth and the 
music of the spheres, and, in a happy mo- 
ment, calls him the o-wotttlkos, who seeks to 
know the eternal and immutable principles of 
the universe. And then Democritus comes 
into view : he was rich by inheritance, and 
became poor; at one time he was considered 
a lunatic, and Hippocrates was sent for to 
cure him. At another he is said to have 
" put out " his eyes, in order that he might 
contemplate the cosmical theory of the uni- 
verse being made up of ultimate atoms — 
which were uncreated, uncaused, and eternal, 
— and which are in motion everlastingly, — 
and out of which all things, both of matter 
and of spirit, are shaped, — and from which 
all perishable motions of the visible earth 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 45 

and the spheres are correlative, — and to 
which fall every vestige of utility and every 
form of beauty : all else is subject to decay, 
for they alone are imperishable. 

And then there follow in the intervening 
centuries investigations : in the science of 
the stars ; in the revolving system of the 
sun ; in the record written on the rock ; in 
the shifting ice-caps of the telluric poles ; in 
the emerging and submerging of the lands ; 
in the winds that sweep the continents and 
seas ; in the order and sequence of things 
inanimate ; in the stories of the nations as 
they rise and fall; in the laws of thought 
that work the human mind ; in the arts that 
make for pleasure and relieve from toil ; in 
the motions of the self-conscious soul of 
man ; in everything on which is marked the 
stamp of change ; in the principles that are 
immutable and eternal ; so many names of 
the great and good appear that they must 
be read upon their monuments. The sun- 
optikos must learn and know about these 
many things, and co- relate them into one 



46 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

group, one system, one universe, where no- 
thing stands alone, where all things stand 
and move together. High aims : To see and 
know the system of the universe stand and 
move together with all its parts " according 
well ; " to refuse to take the parts away 
from the principles and laws that permeate 
and rule all things ; to correct the errors 
made by special science in its search for 
truth ; — to be the only concrete science, the 
Science of the sciences, the science which 
works out the problem from the elements of 
all knowledge. 

' ' Enter the path ! There spring the healing streams 
Quenching all thirst ! there bloom th' immortal 

flowers 
Carpeting all the way with joy ! there throng 
Swiftest and sweetest hours ! " 



VIII. 

In 1853, O. W. Wight wrote a "Romance 
of Abelard and Heloise." This work was 
also published by D. Appleton and Co. It 
contains many impassioned and eloquent pas- 
sages, which exhibit the style and methods 
of the author's earlier writings. In this 
place, we offer some of these passages : — 

" Real romance is in real history. Life, 
as it is lived, is more wonderful and touching 
than life as it is shaped by the fancy. His- 
tory gives us the substance of existence ; 
fiction gives nothing but its shadow. The 
highest conception of genius is meagre, when 
compared with the drama that humanity is 
enacting in time and space. 

" Most of us have lived a romance more 
beautiful and touching than has ever yet 
been described by the pen of man. Experi- 



48 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

ence is the light whereby one is able to read 
all romantic history. We know when the 
historian writes fiction instead of truth, for 
within us is a test. Truth to life we always 
demand. The romancer must faithfully give 
us the experience of his own heart, or faith- 
fully report the experience of others. No- 
thing less than the history of real life will 
satisfy us. Truth is stranger than fiction, 
and truth we must have." 

" Abelard and Heloise were human, and 
have for us a human interest. In the Mid- 
dle Age, heaven - facing speakers and actors 
walked the earth, that looked quite similar 
to those who are moving to and fro to - day. 
Man then felt, as he now feels, that it is 
not good to be alone. Then the precious 
heart of woman deeply yearned, as it al- 
ways yearns, for sympathy, with which she 
is blessed, without which she is wretched. 
Down upon thy brother and thy sister 
looked, calmly and sweetly, the same stars, 
that each night keep watch over thee. The 
wind that kissed the cold cheek of the Alps 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 49 

then, kisses it still. The same hymn of na- 
ture that now goes up from the hills of New 
England, and the deep -bosomed forests of 
the West, to greet the morning, then went 
up from wold, plain, and mountain, touching 
the heart of the early worshiper, and melo- 
diously uttering for him the praise that his 
soul would give to Deity. Then, too, each 
son of Adam, and each daughter of Eve, 
needed food and raiment, for which they 
toiled, slaved, enslaved, trafficked, cheated, 
stole, talked, wrote, preached, fought, or 
robbed. The breath of passion swept the 
chords of life, and the answering tones of joy 
or woe were heard. Reformers disturbed 
conservatives in Church and State, and states 
men preserved kingdoms, as politicians now 
save the union. Then, too, men wept and 
prayed, laughed and sung. There were then 
marriages and giving in marriage, wars and 
rumors of wars, loves and hates, the cries 
of childhood and the complainings of age. 
The enchanting spirit of beauty flooded 
heaven and earth ; and the solemn mystery 

3 



50 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

of things filled the soul with awe. The 
old sphinx was still sitting by the wayside, 
and the children of earth strove to solve the 
tough and ever recurring problem of des- 
tiny. Stars were silent above, graves were 
silent beneath ; and the soul was compelled 
to answer as she could to the imperative 
questionings of sense. The Middle Age was 
an age of humanity, and has an interest for 
us, for human things touch the heart." 

" Abelard comes up from the forests and 
the villages of Brittany, and gazes upon 
Paris for the first time with wonder and de- 
light. His blood flowed faster, and his am- 
bition is inflamed anew. How many sons 
of genius shall follow him — to fame and 
misery ! Dear, deceptive, gay, graceful city ! 
Thou shalt increase in wisdom and beauty, 
in strength and sin ; thou shalt invite the 
lovers of pleasure from the ends of the 
earth to enjoy thy charms ; thou shalt drink 
the wine of poesy and wit, and eat the food 
of learning, and take the lead in the world's 
civilization ; thy night revels shall be revo- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 51 

lutions, and thy fair bosom more than once 
shall be drenched with the blood of heroes 
contending for thy smile ; thou wilt banish 
thine own children and nourish those that 
come unto thee from afar ; thou shalt be the 
loved and the envied among the capitals of 
the nations ; but the rose of innocence thou 
wilt not wear upon thy ravishing breast ; 
thy queenly face shall fade, thou shalt at 
length sleep with thy elder sisters, with Nin- 
eveh, Athens, and Rome ; the hand of retri- 
bution shall touch thee, and through long- 
years of mourning thou shalt decay; the 
eyes of strangers shall gaze upon thy ruins, 
and foreign feet shall tread carelessly upon 
thy dust ! " 

" Philosophy as well as war has its heroes. 
It is difficult to tell whose fame is greater, 
that of Alexander or that of Plato. War 
is only the bloody encounter of ideas. The 
great hero is the representative of a great 
principle. It was not Caesar that conquered 
at Pharsalia ; in the person of Caesar human 
liberty conquered Roman liberty. Ideas 



52 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

were at war in Abelard and William of 
Champeanx. The battle which they were 
fighting at Paris may have been fraught with 
greater consequences to the world than that 
of Arbela or that of Waterloo. . . . That 
philosophic quarrel at Paris in the first years 
of the twelfth century was really one of the 
most important events of the Middle Age. 
It was the cradle of Scholasticism, and the 
first decided declaration of the independence 
of human thought in modern as distinguished 
from ancient history. After centuries of 
darkness, there arose once more a champion 
of inextinguishable reason." 

" A religion is the main source of every 
civilization. Moral force governs the world, 
directs the course of history. Religion lies at 
the foundation of the great movements of 
society. Christianity, Mohammedanism, and 
Brahminism are means of civilization. Asi- 
atic civilization is as good as Brahminism 
can make it. If society ever advances there, 
the East must have a new religion. The 
Turks and Arabs can never advance until 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 53 

they lose their reverence for the Prophet and 
accept a better faith. The civilization of 
Europe and the United States is the best in 
the world, because it is the growth of the 
holiest religion. In those kingdoms and 
states where society has advanced most, we 
are sure to find the best form of Chris- 
tianity. 

" The state of society may always be de- 
termined by ascertaining the condition of 
woman. When she is the companion of 
man, and her relation to him that of equal- 
ity, then we may be sure that a high point 
of rational and moral development has been 
attained. Tardiness of civilization has al- 
ways been chicled by the complaints of wo- 
man. She represents the higher sentiments, 
disinterested love, the benevolent affections, 
religion, and delicate sensibility, the divinest 
part of humanity, that part of our nature, 
advance towards the realization of which 
in practical life constitutes true progress. 
When men are brutes women will be slaves. 
The lords of creation mav declare that the 



54 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

daughters of Eve are inferior to themselves, 
but such a declaration only shows their own 
weakness and defects. He who places a 
light estimate upon things of highest worth 
proclaims his own ignorance and want of 
judgment. Man through the frailty of wo- 
man publishes his low estimate of all that is 
holiest in the relations of life. Strike out 
from existence all that is suggested by the 
words mother, daughter, sister, wife, and no 
man would care to live. One half of hu- 
manity is man ; another, yet equal half, is 
woman. He who speaks lightly of woman, 
curses the hand that supported him in the 
hour of helplessness, pronounces a maledic- 
tion upon the fair young being that with 
mingled reverence and trust calls him father, 
utters blasphemy against the Being who has 
filled with disinterested affection the bosom 
of her whose heart beats with blood kindred 
to his own, and returns hatred for love to 
her who has bestowed upon him a greater 
gift than all wealth can buy. He who knows 
woman in all these relations, however, rarely 
speaks evil of her." 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 55 

" Heloise, thy spirit has found the sympa- 
thy for which it longed, but delirium flows 
swift in thy blood, and paints upon thy 
youthful cheek the crimson of sin. The 
tongue whose eloquence charms thee is half 
false ; in the gaze that thy lover bends on 
thee lurks insincerity ; there is a wave of 
scorn in the smile that gives thee such deep 
joy ; there is a tone of hollowness in the 
heart that beats against thy reclining head ; 
thou art cursed with passion and not blessed 
with love. These days of intoxicating pleas- 
ure are swiftly passing ; the Eden in which 
thou art standing shall soon be metamor- 
phosed ; its bright colors shall fade, its music 
shall cease, the warmth of its atmosphere 
shall turn to chilliness, its rich fruits shall 
vanish, and around thee on every side shall 
be desolation as far as the eye can reach. 
We pity thee, but cannot greatly blame ; 
the earth is cursed beneath thee, but heaven, 
with its mercy, is above thee still ! " 

" We pity thee, Abelard ; yet it seems to 
be the hand of eternal justice that is laid 



56 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

upon thee. Words of solemn import were 
unheeded by thee, — words written by the 
finger of the Infinite, — Pride goeth before 
destruction, and a haughty spirit before a 
fall. This is but the beginning of calam- 
ities ; torture of soul, far more insupportable 
than torture of the body, awaits thee. No 
hero, no martyr art thou, suffering for obe- 
dience to the just and the true ; but a viola- 
tor of the high law of brotherhood, bearing 
the penalty of misdeeds. We must remind 
thee that the universe is constructed on a 
basis of rectitude, and resign thee to thy 
fate. Many will charge us with severity 
towards Abelard ; but we cannot in con- 
science address him otherwise. We believe 
in driving money-changers out of the temple 
of God, in crying ' Woe ' into the ears of 
scribes and Pharisees, in laying the rod on 
the backs of fools. Mercy should always 
temper justice ; but we open wide the flood- 
gates of evil when we dethrone justice, and 
shield the criminal from the penalty of his 
crime. Our times are cursed with a kind of 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 57 

nerveless sentimentality, that whines over 
the scoundrel, and has no pity on society that 
he scourges beyond measure. Would to 
Heaven that the punishment which overtook 
Abelard might be sternly visited, by legis- 
lative enactment, on every lawless breaker 
of the household gods ! " 

"These love-letters, purified by Catholic 
ncense, will remind you of the ancient 
Spanish toils, under which Zurbaran seems 
to gather all the shades and all the melan- 
cholies of earth, in order to console them 
from on high by a luxurious hope, and by 
the splendor of beatitude. God is not there, 
although we see only Him ; man only is 
there, though we see him not. Over those 
pages, so nobly refused for the expression of 
human suffering, roll invisible years. All 
the branches of that myrtle, when you touch 
them, sigh and groan. Stop before the 
gladiator, after he has been overcome in the 
arena : examine his face, — not a muscle is 
contracted ; you listen at his mouth for a 
complaint, an imprecation, a word which will 

3* 



58 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

be the epopee of all his griefs, — the word 
does not come ; you hold your breath ; the 
patient is about to die ; he is dead ; and you 
have heard nothing. And nevertheless you 
find that all has not been told. A truth, un- 
til then unperceived, has just been revealed 
to you : The calmness of the man appears to 
be more terrible than the tempest, and it is 
not without fright that you contemplate that 
impassive exterior, when you see within him 
his heart in agony, his hopes wounded to 
death until the last, and his mind in tears, — 
all filled with a dear image, and the rending 
agonies of an eternal adieu." 

" May one kind grave unite each hapless name, 
And graft my love immortal on thy fame ! 
Then, ages hence, when all my woes are o'er, 
When this rebellious heart shall beat no more ; 
If ever chance two wandering lovers brings 
To Paraclete's white walls and silver springs, 
O'er the pale marble shall they join their heads ; 
And drink the falling tears each other sheds ; 
Then sadly say, with mutual pity moved, 
Oh, may we never love as these have loved ! 
From the full choir when loud hosannahs rise, 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 59 

And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice, 
Amid that scene if some relenting eye 
Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie, 
Devotion's self shall steal a thought from heaven, 
One human tear shall drop, and be forgiven. 
And sure if fate some future bard shall join 
In sad similitude of griefs to mine, 
Condemned whole years in absence to deplore, 
And image charms he must behold no more ; 
Such, if there be, who loves so long, so well ; 
Let him our sad, our tender story tell ; 
The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost ; 
He best can paint them who shall feel the most." 



IX. 

The steamship which heaves upon and 
ploughs the mobile waters of the sea, carry- 
ing in safety the pride, the hope, the love of 
a thousand hearts, with its beams and planks 
of oak and steel, conceived by the mind and 
genius of man, and shaped by his dexterous 
and skillful hand, compact and strong, and 
faithful in every part, a thing of beauty and 
of power, that braves the perils of the deep, 
and battles with the rolling waves, — the 
steamship, as time goes on and as it wan- 
ders back and forth, strains, and wears, and 
tears, and breaks, and finally goes to pieces 
on the strand, or falls beneath the silent deep ; 
and when his time has come, so falls man. 

In the spring of 1853, O. W. Wight went 
from Boston to Liverpool in eleven days, on 
the steamer Niagara. With little delay he 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 61 

made a pilgrimage to places consecrated by- 
favorite poets : the rose - bush planted by 
Mrs. Hemans ; Rydal Mount, where Words- 
worth lived, wrote, and died ; the scenes 
among which Coleridge lived and struggled ; 
the untimely grave of Hartley Coleridge ; 
the beautiful streams so often waded by 
Christopher North ; the Falls of Lodore, 
that made music for Southey, were all vis- 
ited with varied emotions of a poetic imagi- 
nation. " Lakes and fields and mountains, 
forming exquisitely beautiful and pictu- 
resque landscapes, seemed ... to have been 
planted there at the dawn of creation, on 
purpose for the great poets that were to 
come in these latest times." Then he "trav- 
eled all over Scotland and looked much up- 
on one of the fairest lands of earth : " The 
scenes and places described by Sir Walter 
Scott, and the soil consecrated by the feet 
of Robert Burns, made new and strange 
impressions upon the heart and soul of one 
who had long desired to visit them. On the 
shores of Loch Lomond, Loch Katrine, Loch 



62 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

Leven, and Loch Arne, there was a new sun- 
shine ; there was another music in the wind ; 
a gentler motion seized upon the leaves ; the 
birds sang sweeter songs ; and all the way- 
was carpeted with joy : and one knows not 
what change had been wrought in the be- 
holder, as memory, from these enchanting 
lakes, ran across the intervening sea to the 
autumnal skies that o'er - arched the shores 
and waters of Lake Erie. 

Mr. Wight had previously collected and 
edited the miscellaneous philosophical papers 
of Sir William Hamilton : this work was 
used as a text - book in some of our schools. 
When he arrived in Edinburgh, Sir Wil- 
liam sent him a cordial invitation to spend 
a week with him at Largo, whither he had 
gone for his vacation. He found the house- 
hold of the renowned philosopher one of the 
most beautiful, refined, and cultured, that 
ever existed, and there met several of the 
professors of Edinburgh University. Soon 
after he went to London, where, at the spe- 
cial request of M. Cousin, he translated his 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W, WIGHT. 63 

admirable work on " The True, the Beauti- 
ful, and the Good, " and dedicated it to Sir 
William Hamilton, in terms eliciting his 
eulogy. " Hamilton had reviewed Cousin's 
system with great severity in the ' Edinburgh 
Quarterly,' which provoked the wrath of the 
mercurial Frenchman." But after the dedi 
cation of Cousin's volume, " there followed 
a correspondence which ended in a treaty 
of peace between these two eminent philoso- 
phers." 

Before leaving Edinburgh he received an 
invitation to dine with De Quincey, who 
lived at Lasswade about eight miles away. 
On his way over country roads and fra- 
grant meadows, near their home, he met De 
Quincey's two daughters, who conducted 
him to a neat little brick cottage, stand- 
ing by a swift flowing brook, making soft 
water-fall music, as it gently broke over the 
rocks. They led him into a small, plainly- 
furnished drawing-room, informing him that 
their father would soon appear. For a long 
time the conversation turned upon the lake 



64 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

district of England and the famous poets, — 
" when there glided noiselessly into the room 
a little, weird - looking old man, saffron- 
colored, with unkempt hair, dirty collar, long 
snuff-brown coat, feet sliding about in large 
India-rubber galoshes, and extended to me a 
wee, fleshless hand, more like a bird -claw 
than ' the prehensile organ of man's suprem- 
acy.' The daughters seated him in one 
corner of a large armchair, where he sank 
almost out of sight." At the close of a 
simple and excellent dinner, De Quincey, 
excusing himself, "took from his vest pocket 
a pill of opium as large as a small hickory- 
nut and swallowed it. Soon his large head 
began to waver on his small neck, and he 
laid it down on his thin arms folded over 
one corner of the table." In the mean time 
they returned to their beloved lake poets, 
and when the guest was about to take his 
leave, De Quincey entered the drawing-room 
again, and soon dozed in the large armchair, 
while they went on with their romantic 
talk. " Soon, however, the withered divinity 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 65 

showed signs of awakening, " when he read, 
imitating the author's voice, Wordsworth's 
" Ode on Immortality, " and, " as he closed the 
book, a strange light seemed to glow through 
his eyes and illuminate his face. He began 
to talk with a voice that seemed to flow out 
of the unknown, low, mellifluous, ceaseless, 
filling one with awe. We listened almost 
breathless, and soon found ourselves at his 
feet, looking into his transfigured face, like 
entranced children. On, on, he discoursed, 
as I have never heard mortal discourse, 
before or since. If one could imagine all 
the wisdom, sentiment, and learning to be 
crushed from De Quincey's many volumes 
of printed books and to be poured out in a 
continuous stream, he might form some con- 
ception of that long discourse, how long we 
know not. It was a prolonged and inten- 
sified suspiria de profundis. When the 
monologue ceased, the poor, exhausted old 
man of genius had a tallow dip lighted to 
show me through the trees to the road-side 
gate. I took my leave of the little house- 



6Q MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

hold who had entertained me with a true 
banquet of the gods, and walked to Edin- 
burgh, in the beautiful Scotch gloaming, 
beholding on the way the great sun rising, 
full -orbed from the distant sea, and medi- 
tated on many things." 

He went next to York and Manchester, 
and through Wales to Dublin, and thence 
to Killarney, whose lakes are as beautiful as 
the lochs of Scotland. He writes : " Dur- 
ing a morning walk from the village of Kil- 
larney, through the pass of Dunloe, to the 
upper lake, a distance of eighteen miles, I 
counted over four hundred beggars, most of 
them children, some of whom followed me 
for hours. They were in tatters, and begged 
from necessity, and not professionally. It 
was impossible to relieve the distress of so 
many. Their naked limbs, sunken eyes, and 
lean faces proclaimed the woes of Ireland 
more eloquently than whole volumes of sen- 
sational literature. Indeed, the people of 
the Emerald Isle have suffered more oppres- 
sion and wrong than any other people under 
the sun except the Jews." 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 67 

He hastened to London, and during a 
three months' stay, had the good fortune to 
meet a number of eminent men : Mr. Gil- 
bart, a bank-manager, and a financial writer, 
a member of many learned societies of Lon- 
don, took him to the annual dinner of the 
Royal Geographical Society. " There were 
seventeen at dinner, with Prince Albert in 
the chair. The dinner was faultless, and 
the propriety of the occasion was maintained 
with a dignity bordering on solemnity." 
Bulwer was " a polished and accomplished 
dandy, whose novels are sifted over with the 
diamond dust of sensuousness more seduc- 
tive to susceptible minds than the shameless 
realism of Zola. And Thackeray was a man 
who seemed very stately and reserved, hav- 
ing a towering genius, and a mighty sorrow 
in his heart. Thomas Carlyle, at whose 
house were Mill, Froude, and Herbert 
Spencer, when he began his customary 
monologue on the superiority of silence to 
speech, and when he was boldly interrupted 
by the Yankee philosopher : — 



68 MEMORIAL OF 0. \V. WIGHT. 

" Carlyle talking refutes his own doc- 
trines of silence. To us his speech is as 
great as the deeds of a hero. We have two 
eyes, two ears, two feet, two hands, and one 
tongue, — doubtless, that we may see, hear, 
walk, and do twice as much as we say ; yet 
the organ of speech has its legitimate office 
and must not be cheated out of its single 
share. I grant that we have silly talking in 
mournful abundance ; and have we not also 
silly doing, moving, hearing, seeing, and the 
silence of fools ? As the man is, so will his 
product be, whether of speech or anything 
else; his actions will show, and his words 
report, the quality of the soul. The poet 
that sings of Agamemnon's deeds must 
share the hero's fame. Which was greater, 
the philosophizing Plato, or the governing 
Pericles ? Was the doing of Hildebrand 
superior to the singing of Dante ? Was 
Cromwell, in action, stronger and wiser 
than Shakespeare in talk? The Word cre- 
ated the world. 

" Are not the dreams of Goethe equal to 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 69 

the campaigns of Gustavus Adolplius ? Was 
not the brain of Scaliger as strong as the 
hand of Augustus II., the Saxon prince, who 
twisted the iron banister into a rope ? From 
the highest talk and action to the lowest, 
there is an infinite gradation, through the 
good, the instructive, the useful, the prudent, 
the amusing, the exemplary, the innocent, 
the weak, the foolish, the stupid, the profane, 
the conceited, the bigoted, etc." 

At the close of the year, from London, 
" where everything under the sun is to be 
had by him who can pay for it and who 
knows how to find it," Mr. Wight went 
to Paris, taking with him a letter of intro- 
duction to Madame Mohl, from his good 
friend Angus Fletcher. " The letter was a 
key to unlock good Parisian society." Ma- 
dame Mohl, whose husband was one of the 
immortal forty of the French Academy, was 
the successor to Madame Recamier, and hers 
may be regarded as the last saloon of an 
earlier regime. She took him to the annual 
meeting of the French Academy, where the 



70 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

"immortal forty" were seen in all their 
glory. 

He has given brief reminiscences of Vic- 
tor Cousin, M. Lamartine, De Lamennais, 
and Leon Gambetta. Every Saturday after- 
noon he visited M. Cousin, who had rooms 
at the Sorbonne. He wrote : " When I 
went to take my leave of M. Cousin, on my 
return to America, in the spring, he made 
to me a very amusing little speech, — amus- 
ing to me, sincere enough on his part. He 
kissed me on both cheeks, after the French 
fashion, and said among other things, ' Do 
not fall into the great tide of Materialism 
in America ; persevere in the study of spirit- 
ualistic philosophy ; in short, follow the 
great examples of your distinguished coun- 
trymen, George Washington and Professor 
Tappan.' " 

" I was talking one evening with M. La- 
martine and his wife, when a page from 
' Le Temps ' newspaper called for promised 
copy. He had not written a word of it. 
Requesting me to continue my conversation 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 71 

with Madame, he seated himself at his 
writing desk, and within thirty minutes 
handed the page a bundle of manuscript 
which made over two columns of sprightly 
reading in the newspaper of the next morn- 
ing." " The first time I visited Pere-la- 
Chaise was as one of the fourteen follow- 
ers of De Lamennais to his grave. After 
a life of controversy he had reached his 
final rest. He was one of the most gifted 
men in France, but did not succeed, as 
no man has ever succeeded, in making the 
world believe that his own mind was the 
yardstick of the universe, to measure all 
things, the Church as well as the State. In 
his last days he had been despondent and, I 
was informed, somewhat reckless. He was 
under the ban of the Church, and some one, 
I have forgotten who, pronounced a funeral 
oration at his sepulture. In a long conver- 
sation, late one morning, over a cup of cof- 
fee, Gambetta denounced the Emperor in 
the most energetic terms, applying to him 
epithets of the most opprobrious kind. He 



72 MEMORIAL OF 0, W. WIGHT. 

cursed the people of France for submitting 
to such an usurper. I closed the conversa- 
tion by saying to him, * Young man, in due 
time, Louis Napoleon will either hang you, 
or you will dethrone him.' ' 

Long afterwards he wrote : " Important 
business called me unexpectedly home in 
the early spring. I took passage on the ill- 
fated steamship ' City of Glasgow,' but a 
slight accident detained me, and the agents 
of the line changed my ticket to the ' City of 
Manchester,' which sailed a few days later. 
The passage was of eighteen days' duration, 
against a fierce battalion of equinoctial gales. 
The ' Glasgow ' was never heard of after sail- 
ing from Liverpool. Sometimes one's life 
hangs by a slender thread of circumstances, 
admonishing us to treat with gravity our 
smallest actions. Whether it would have 
been better for me to have perished with 
the ship in the great deep, He only knows 
by whom the hairs of our heads are num- 
bered." 



X. 



At the close of the preceding chapter we 
find four things that are suggestive : The 
important business which induced Mr. Wight 
to hasten home ; the narrow escape from 
being engulphed in the sea ; the fact that we 
should treat with gravity our smallest ac- 
tions ; and the infinite care of Him who only 
knows what is good for us. 

In the last statement there is a deep, 
pathetic meaning : it was written more than 
thirty years after the occasion which in- 
spired it, — when destiny had brought all 
it could, when memory ran back through 
all the busy intervening years, when the 
heart had suffered under the burden of a 
great sorrow, when a wearied life was com- 
ing to an end, when the patient soul had 
been silent for long years, and when the 



74 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

spirit, looking into the eternity beyond, was 
forced to breathe a wish, or perhaps utter a 
regret. Almost in the shadow of the myrtle 
that was laid up on his casket by loving 
hands, he seemed to say : If the cup from 
which I drank could have been filled with 
the lethal waters of the deep sea, and if I 
could have fallen to my final rest on that 
day of storm and tempest when the ill-fated 
steamer was crushed into oblivion by the 
pitiless waves, I would gladly give up all I 
have done and suffered. But this was not 
so : the wish was not quite expressed ; the 
regret was not fully spoken ; for all that 
had been was left with Him by whom the 
hairs of our heads are numbered. 

As we look upon the endless manifesta- 
tions going on around us, and as we reason 
in regard to the ceaseless and eternal order 
of the universe, we see a process of evolu- 
tion which is the expression of an unalter- 
able Providence. And this means that all 
things are related to God's government, and 
are under his watchful and protecting care. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 75 

If He illumines the soul, let the light shine 
for others ; if He inspires the mind with 
great thoughts, tell them to the children of 
men ; if He fills the heart with immortal 
love, let it break, so that others may learn 
to be content with their lot. The bow of 
promise set on yonder cloud vanishes ; the 
leaf and the flower dissolve into their ele- 
ments ; the nations fall into the silence of 
history ; and the godlike form of man min- 
gles with the dust out of which it was cre- 
ated : and these are but steps in the great 
mystery of which we too make a part, — a 
part of that wonderful evolution submissive 
to the hand of an immutable Providence. 

One who has not braved the storm-trou- 
bled ocean, who has not " heard the head- 
long South-wind fiercely sweep," and wrestle 
with the northern blast ; who has not seen 
" the wild tyrant of the western wave " lift 
the treacherous sea on high, does not know, 
cannot know, how great is the triumph of 
man's genius, that has wrought the fabric of 
the steamship which has conquered the rest- 



76 MEMORIAL OF 0. \V. WIGHT. 

less spirit of the deep, and can bear the 
priceless burden of the hearts we love in 
safety from shore to shore. Man's genius 
has constructed a form, in every part, so 
compact, so adapted, and so adequate, that 
one may say : — 

" Here 's a, fabric that implies eternity." 
The important business : He had been 
engaged to a young lady for several years. 
" The marriage had been put off from time 
to time on account of her health." Her 
mother had represented to him that her 
daughter was afflicted with hysteria. Her 
brothers and sisters and father were all 
dead. She was the only living child. At 
this time the mother also died, leaving her 
daughter alone, — her lover being on the 
other side of the ocean. On receipt of the 
news of her bereavement he hastened home 
to her. Had he been on the ill-fated t; Glas- 
gow,*' she would have waited in vain for his 
return. An accident, trivial enough, left 
him to cross the stormy Atlantic, — to sail 
a long, weary voyage against the battalions 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 77 

of fierce gales on another sea, that " meets 
the o'erarching heaven on every side." 

He reached America about the first of 
April, 1854. His affianced was alone, wait- 
ing for him. She had a severe illness soon 
after his arrival, and he watched at her bed- 
side for forty-eight hours. He met the fam- 
ily physician, and anxiously inquired in re- 
gard to the nature of her malady. He was 
always assured that she was a sufferer from 
hysteria, and that in time everything would 
be all right. The privileges of a confiden- 
tial relation, on the part of the physician, 
were not implied; on this point there was 
no plea. And so with full trust, with high 
hopes, and believing in his destiny, on the 
Saturday preceding the fifteenth of May, 
1854, he was married : his wife was twenty- 
three, and he was thirty years of age. She 
had inherited a moderate fortune. He had 
an income from the sale of his books. The 
future was bright and filled with the vis- 
ions of success, happiness, and noble aims. 
In the past, his ambition had been realized, 



78 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

— but more was to come. He was gifted, 
and a favorite of fortune, — so it seemed. 

" We are the voices of the wandering wind, 
Which moan for rest and rest can never find ; 
Lo ! as the wind is so is mortal life, 
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife. 

" Wherefore and whence we are ye cannot know, 
Nor where life springs nor whither life doth go ; 
We are as ye are, ghosts from the inane, 
What pleasure have we of our changeful pain ? 

" What pleasure hast thou of thy changeless bliss ? 
Nay, if love lasted, there were joy in this ; 
But life's way is the wind's way, all these things 
Are but brief voices breathed on shifting strings." 

Almost immediately after marriage he and 
his wife embarked for Europe. In due time 
the steamer reached Liverpool, and they 
went directly to the famous " Lake Dis- 
trict" of England. About a month after 
marriage, his wife was, one day, at Berwick, 
stricken down at his feet with a fit of epi- 
lepsy. "Attack followed attack, until she 
had seventeen in the course of the night." 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 79 

He stood alone by her bedside, amazed, be- 
wildered, becrushed, during that long, dread- 
ful, and lonely night, turning gray ere the 
sun rose o'er England's poetic landscapes. 
Her fearful disease had been concealed from 
him by her parent and her physician. If 
her parents had been living, it would have 
been his duty to take her home to them, 
and never have seen her again in this world. 
But she was an orphan and alone. She had 
not been to blame. That dreadful night, on 
bended knees before God, he adopted her 
as his child. And never a word of reproach 
to her on account of the concealment es- 
caped his lips, during all the lonely and 
trying years that have since come and gone. 
And from that hour, he was an affection- 
ate parent to her, "father and mother in 
one," as she, in her lucid moments, has 
a thousand times, with gushing tears, ex- 
pressed it; and during many of the lonely 
intervening years, he was sole nurse to her, 
— patiently, tenderly, uncomplainingly per- 
forming offices for her that no money could 



80 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

procure. He wandered over Europe nearly 
four years taking his ward and patient with 
him to many eminent physicians, hoping 
that perchance her disease might be cured. 
It had existed from her infancy, and was 
incurable, as every physician knew, and un- 
fitted her for the duties of life : neither by 
man's law, nor by the divine law, could she 
be either wife or mother. For the hapless 
and the helpless, in whom reason never sat 
rightly on her throne, what more could mor- 
tal do ? 

Such is the briefly told story of the early 
days of a wedded life, stranger than fiction, 
realistic in the extreme, and intensely tragic. 
And there is another story that may be 
briefly told : after his death it was found 
inclosed with an article from his pen on 
marriage and divorce. It runs as follows : 
A highly respectable young man was en- 
gaged to be married to a young lady of high 
social standing, and the nuptials were to 
take place on a certain day. Everything 
went happily, and he was looking forward 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 81 

to a happy life, when the expectant bride- 
groom, two days before the appointed time, 
made the startling and shocking discovery 
that his affianced was subject to periodical 
fits, which the best scientific skill had failed 
io cure. When in a fit she would utter 
fearful cries, and become extremely violent, 
requiring strong men to hold her ; she 
would fall down insensible, and the parox- 
ysm was followed by great physical exhaus- 
tion, leaving her weak and fretful for days 
afterward ; she was truly an object of pity, 
causing her family many anxious hours, — 
but there was a hope that time and skillful 
treatment would make her fits less frequent 
and less violent. She had the " falling 
sickness : " it was epilepsy, — a disease so 
fearful, as Dr. Watson says, that " the 
beasts of the field flee in terror at the char- 
acteristic cry of one seized with it." And 
over the door, by which one enters to the 
full embrace of this dreadful malady, is 
written : " Let those who enter here leave 
all hope behind." 

4* 



82 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

On the day mentioned, while paying her 
a visit, her great malady seized her, and laid 
her writhing at his feet. He was horrified 
at the fearful spectacle. He questioned the 
family, and then the dreadful story was told, 
— "and the discovery shook his reason." 
The next day he wandered from home, with 
a disordered mind. He went from place to 
place, no one knows where. His mind and 
soul could not make one music as before. 
On the night of that day — dies ira, dies 
ilia — a deck-hand of a ferry-boat noticed 
and watched a young man excitedly pacing 
up and down the deck, and when he tried 
to throw himself overboard seized him and 
saved his life. " He begged piteously to be 
released, saying that life was no longer of 
any value to him, and offered those who held 
him twenty -five dollars to let him commit 
suicide." He was given in charge of the 
police, who found on his person twenty-five 
dollars, a pint of brandy, and a loaded re- 
volver, which he requested the officer to keep 
to save him from temptation. Pie was dis- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 83 

charged from custody the next morning, and 
was seen in the afternoon, near the Hudson 
River, by one who knew him. This was the 
last trace of him. On that night, which 
took him into its shadowy arms, without 
feeling and without pity, he dropped into 
eternal silence. 



XL 

As we have already chronicled, Mr. 
Wight had returned to the famous Lake 
District of England, where he remained a 
short time. Thence he traveled rapidly over 
England again, making a brief stay in Lon- 
don. He crossed the Channel to Calais. He 
went through Belgium, visiting Ghent, Lou- 
vain, Brussels, Aachen, Cologne and its un- 
finished cathedral, sailing up the Rhine to 
Bonn, Coblenz, and Mayence, passing the 
summer residence of the Prussian kings, em- 
bowered above the vine -terraced banks of 
the river. Going on by railroad to Heidel- 
berg, Baden, and Basel, and through the 
Jura Mountains to Lausanne, he reverently 
visited the particular spot where Gibbon 
wrote his mighty history. Over beautiful 
Lake Leman he went to Geneva, and made 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 85 

" a pilgrimage to Ferney, where Voltaire 
lived so many years, stirring up all Europe 
with a literature abounding in amazing 
wealth of sarcastic denunciation of what he 
regarded as oppression, wrong, inhumanity, 
error, and superstition.'' 

At Geneva he studied John Calvin's book 
called the " Institutes, " and became inter- 
ested in his work, as a law-giver, as a ruler of 
men, as one having the genius and the power 
to subject and govern the turbulent and ras- 
cally Genevese, and reduce them to order 
and decency of living, compelling them to 
obey the eternal law of God. He had been 
terribly prejudiced against John Calvin 
by the oft-told story of Servetus, who had 
preached " damnable heresy, " and pro- 
claimed theosophic theories that threatened 
to subvert moral order and the foundations 
of Church and State. But " nothing oc- 
curred to Calvin to do but to follow the 
many examples of his hard age, to put the 
dangerous theosophist on top of a wood-pile 
and burn him up." 



86 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

At the close of a glorious summer and a 
gilded autumn, lie left the wonderland of 
the Alps, and went down the Rhone, through 
leafless vineyards, to Lyons, Avignon, and 
Marseilles, an old city founded by the Greeks 
not long after the fabled nursing of Romulus 
and Remus by the female wolf on the site 
of future Rome. A long journey by dili- 
gence took him to Nice, where he spent the 
rest of the winter, where he met ex-Presi- 
dent Van Buren, and whence, in the spring, 
while the orange trees were in blossom, he 
went to Turin. There he had the good for- 
tune to meet Count Cavour, and hear him 
make a speech in the Senate. He was one 
of the greatest statesmen of our time, and 
" it was fortunate for Italy that he lived long 
enough to lay the solid foundation of her 
unity." 

In his book, " A Winding Journey around 
the World , " he tells the following story : 
" From Turin I went to Alexandria, and 
thence northward to the terminus of the 
railroad at a little village on the western 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 87 

shore of Lake Maggiore. It was raining 
fearfully on ray arrival, and a bitter wind 
was blowing from the great, white, snow- 
clad Alps. At the only inn of the village I 
inquired the price of a room. One always 
makes such an inquiry in Italy, if he is 
at all prudent. The proprietor said it was 
twenty francs a day not including meals. I 
told him I would not pay the extortionate 
price. He shrugged his shoulders and re- 
sponded that there was no other hotel in the 
place, and that the train did not return till 
the next day, at the same time directing at- 
tention to the driving rain outside. I took 
my gripsack in my hand and walked down 
to the shore of the lake, where I bargained 
with three fishermen, who had a strong boat, 
to row me to the other side. I took the 
helm and the three stalwart fellows rowed 
bravely through the waves three miles to a 
town on the opposite shore. They hurried 
away on landing, and I was taken in charge 
by two Austrian soldiers, who conducted me, 
dripping wet, before the commandant of 



88 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

the border military post. My passport was 
promptly demanded, which had been re- 
cently vised at Turin by the American 
charge d'affaires and the Austrian ambas- 
sador. The officer was not satisfied with 
the passport alone, but subjected me to a 
searching crossexamination, questioning me 
in German, English, French, and Italian. 
It happened that I could answer him in 
whatever speech he used. His questions 
were answered promptly and courteously. 
At length I explained to him how I came to 
cross the frontier between Italy and Austrian 
territory at such an inauspicious time. In a 
sort of apologetic way he said that political 
propagandists resorted to any means of en- 
tering the country, and that he was obliged 
to obey orders by exercising a sharp scrutiny. 
I responded, a little significantly, that I was 
not an enemy of Austria, especially while in 
Austria, and requested him to send a soldier 
with me to show, me to the best hotel. Tak- 
ing my leave, I invited him to call on me at 
the hotel and drink a bottle of wine with me. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 89 

He sent up his card in the evening, and we 
had a long, pleasant conversation over a 
bottle of sparkling d'Asti, during which he 
told me a good deal more about the relations 
of Austria and Italy than his government 
would have approved." 

The next day the Italian sun shone out 
brightly, and he went on to Como, Milan, 
Verona, Vincenza, Padua, and Venice. These 
cities " recall the tumultuous history of 
twenty centuries, and still contain the mon- 
uments and art treasures of many vanished 
generations." How we begin to realize that 
there are other workers on this planet be- 
sides ourselves ! And then we understand 
that we have inherited the past. And so 
we see that we may contribute something 
to the future. He writes : " One picture 
among many that I saw in Venice struck 
my imagination very vividly, and has been 
a mental possession for me ever since ; that 
was a portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, by 
Titian, in the private gallery of the Man- 
frini palace. Even now, after more than 



90 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

thirty years, I can shut my eyes and con- 
template it in all its exquisite details. Af- 
terwards, at Rome, I added to my private 
gallery Domenichino's " Communion of St. 
Jerome," and the " Taking down from the 
Cross," of Daniele da Yolterra. Again, at 
Dresden, I added Raphael's " Madonna di 
San Sisto." This little collection of great 
pictures hang imperishably in my brain, and 
I would not exchange it for any gallery in 
the world. In the night, when I cannot 
sleep, I only have to close my eyes firmly 
in order to see my precious pictures, which 
I expect to carry with me into the next 
world. This may be a species of madness ; 
if it is, I prefer it to sanity." 

In the days of a rapid journey to and fro, 
through northern Italy, amid the vales and 
hills, where came the invaders to overthrow 
old Rome, he learned many things strange 
and new, and " began to realize how little 
travelers who are not students of history, 
whose eyes have not been unsealed by the 
great poets and painters to the mysterious 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 91 

beauties of nature, — how little they can 
learn aud know of the beauties and wonders 
of these eastern lands. The soul of the 
world reveals something of itself to the seer, 
only a shadowy little of which he can con- 
vey to others by means of color, form, or 
winged words." 

He went to spend the summer at the Baths 
of Lucca, in the Apennines, where was the 
summer residence of the Tuscan count. 
There, under a good master, he made a 
critical study of the Italian language, which 
he could already speak and read. Again 
he writes : " ; All went merry as a marriage 
bell,' till the cholera came in August. I 
saw terrified Italians lie down on the grass 
by the roadside and die with it in half an 
hour. Friends, whom one saw well at even- 
ing, were dead with it in the morning. Two 
or three thousand summer visitors fled, no 
one seemed to know whither. In Florence, 
fifty miles away, over fifteen per cent, of the 
population perished with the pestilence. I 
went with the brave, good parish priest, day 



92 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

after day, to visit his dying people. By- 
and-by, I too had the disease. My friend, 
the priest, came to see me and offer the con- 
solations of religion. 4 Do you think, good 
father,' I said to him, ' if I were to die 
now, God would damn me ? ' He looked at 
me pathetically, and responded, ' I don't 
know ; I know I would not ; and God is 
better than I am.' " 

"Then spake the prince: 'Is this the end which 
comes 
To all who live ? ' 

' This is the end that conies 
To all,' quoth Channa ; ' he upon the pyre — 



Ate, drank, laughed, loved, and lived, and liked life 

well. 
Then came — who knows ? — some gust of jungle- 
wind, 
A stumble on the path, a taint in the tank, 
A snake's nip, half a span of angry steel, 
A chill, a fish-bone, or a falling tile, 
And life was over and the man is dead.' " 

After having learned to appreciate sculp- 
ture in Florence, and having been taught 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 93 

the wonderful lesson of how much man can 
tell his fellow-man by exquisite forms cut in 
marble, he went to Rome, the Eternal City, 
which is the centre of the world, and looked 
upon it with feelings impossible to describe. 
He remained there many months, devoting 
every day to the study of its ruins, antiqui- 
ties, museums, churches, and treasures of 
art. The vastness of Rome at first discour- 
aged him, but working like the elements, 
making no haste, taking no rest, he added 
little by little to his conquest of knowledge. 
Says he : " Rome did for me in architecture 
what Florence had done for me in sculpture. 
With the help of Canina's superb drawings 
I reconstructed in imagination all the im- 
portant buildings of ancient Rome, out of 
their ruins. The dull details of the guide- 
books, bewildering and stupefying when 
studied alone, afforded clews that led up to 
fruitful results when followed with the aid of 
a book of real genius. Dead ruins seemed 
to stir with life when viewed in the light 
shed on them by Goethe, and miscellaneous 



94 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

miles of broken marble figures in the Vat- 
ican seemed to have a resurrection when 
breathed upon by the spirit of Winckel- 
mann. . . . There were at Rome many 
eminent artists, who were very polite to 
travelers, among whom I formed several 
very pleasant acquaintances. Their society 
was especially useful to a student who was 
not contented with mere guidebook infor- 
mation." 

From Rome he journeyed to Naples. 
Thence he made an excursion to Sicily on 
post-horses across the island and around 
the base of Mount Etna. He kept on to 
Catania, Messina, and Riggio, " the south- 
ernmost city of Italy, from whose orange 
groves the view at morning and evening, 
along the eastern shore of Sicily, with 
smoking Mount Etna in the distance, was 
as enchanting as one's dreams of Paradise." 
Again going northward with post-horses 
through Rome, Sienna, Florence, Bologna, 
Modena, Parma, Mantua, Verona, Venice, 
to Lago di Garda, he " took a boat and 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 95 

sailed sixty miles into the bosom of the 
Alps." 

He writes : " At Mais, on the way, I en- 
gaged of an innkeeper a suitable vehicle 
and went over the Stelvio Pass to the Baths 
of Bormio, in Italy. It is the highest road 
in Europe, thirty-five miles long, built by 
the Austrian government for military pur- 
poses, at a cost of thirty-five millions of 
florins. The vast Oertler glacier, the 
grandest in all the Alps, was seen from all 
points of view, while ascending the mighty 
mountain, in places steep as a house-roof, 
by a series of zigzags made with engineer- 
ing skill. If you can imagine Niagara 
Falls to be twenty times higher, several 
times wider, many times vaster in every 
way, and to be suddenly frozen solid, you 
form some conception of the Oertler glacier. 
Human speech cannot describe the grandeur 
of the view from the top of the pass. On 
the Italian side, slender, rocky, mountain 
spines, ice-clad in all their depressed inter- 
spaces, looked like a city of cathedrals in 



96 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

the sky, extending on either hand as far as 
the eye could reach. With a good glass, 
one could see the marble dome of Milan 
Cathedral and the waters of the Mediter- 
ranean flashing in the southern sun. In 
strange contrast, the forests of the Tyro- 
lese side presented an interminable sea of 
softest green, broken here and there by 
cleared spaces with their villages, like irreg- 
ular patches of gold set in emerald. 

" My driver proved to be a drunkard. 
He nursed a black bottle all the way up 
the mountain, and when we reached the 
summit he was not in a condition to guide 
his horses along a precipice more than fif- 
teen hundred feet plumb down. Neither 
would he give up the reins to me. The 
only alternative was to pitch him out into 
the snow and drive myself. 1 drove down 
on the Italian side till I reached the first 
Austrian military station, three miles below. 
. . . The enraged driver came up on foot 
while I was drinking a bottle of wine with 
the commandant of the station. At my 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 97 

request he was locked up in the guard- 
house, on bread and water, and the polite 
Austrian officer detailed a soldier to drive 
me down to Bormio. The next morning, 
on my return, the fellow was let out, quite 
sober and very penitent. He drove me 
back to Mais, without further mishap." 

Botzen, Innsbruck, and Salzburg were vis- 
ited, and then Ischl, in upper Austria, the 
summer resort of the imperial court. From 
this place delightful excursions were made 
among the Styrian Alps. " In one of these 
excursions, " says he, " I fell upon the Aus- 
trian emperor and his suite of Jagers. We 
took a midday meal in a mountain inn at 
a common table. It was the custom of the 
dull host to collect a florin from each guest 
during the meal. The good-natured emperor 
handed a florin over his shoulder, remark- 
ing : ' I suppose I must pay like the rest.' 
The handsome empress, an excellent horse- 
woman, looked very gay with her attendants, 
as the shadows began to stretch themselves 



U8 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

along the picturesque roads in the after part 
of the day." 

At the close of summer he went back to 
Salzburg, and thence to Lake Konigsee, 
over lofty mountains through Rosenheim to 
Munich, where he remained a few weeks to 
study Bavarian art. " It amused me, " says 
he, " very much to see in a fresco, on the 
wall of a recently built church, the devil 
painted with the head of Goethe. The great 
German poet will live long after frescoes 
and church have crumbled into dust. It is 
not worth our while to lose temper over 
such impotent attempts to defame immortal 
genius." 

The traveler went on through Augsburg, 
Donauwerth, Ratisbon, down the " blue " 
Danube to Vienna, and thence to Buda- 
Pesth, where he saw the Emperor Franz 
Joseph and his brother, the unfortunate 
Maximilian, " disembark from the royal 
yacht and drive up the long hill to the castle 
of Buda. The two, sitting side by side, 
drove in an open barouche, without guards 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 99 

or attendants. The multitude was so dense 
that they frequently crowded persons in front 
between the wheels of the barouche, when 
the attentively observing monarch would 
touch the coachman with a light bamboo 
cane, as a signal to stop, till the unfortunates 
could extricate themselves. There was not 
at that time another sovereign in all Europe 
who could have thus trusted himself to his 
own people. And that, too, was not very 
long after the great Hungarian revolution. 
The young men were brave, and the high- 
strung Hungarians would not disgrace them- 
selves by touching a hair of the undefended 
emperor's head, although at heart they might 
have hated him." 

He retraced his steps to Vienna, and 
thence went on to Dresden, Berlin, Potsdam, 
and back to Dresden for the winter. At the 
outset he procured a proper master and en- 
tered upon a systematic study of the German 
language. " The society of Dresden was 
charming, and its rich picture gallery was 
constantly attractive. The theatre, taken all 



100 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

in all, was then the best in Germany. The 
best plays of Shakespeare, in Schlegel and 
Finck's excellent translation, with such 
actors as Davidson and Devrienne, were put 
upon the stage thoroughly and well. The 
interpretation of Shakespeare by Gervinus, 
the best critic of the great dramatist in 
any language, was carefully studied. Every 
presentation of a play threw new light upon 
it from the highest intellectual standpoint. 
The best dramas of Schiller and Goethe were 
put upon the stage, to the satisfaction of very 
exacting audiences." 

In the spring he left Dresden, and went, 
by way of Leipsic, Hanover, and Dusseldorf, 
to London, to superintend the publication of 
a book he had written during his travels in 
Europe. It was published by Mr. Bentley, 
" anonymously in two volumes," and " was 
reasonably successful," The only copy of 
this work existing in America is in the pos- 
session of the author of these memoirs. It 
is a philosophical fiction of no ordinary 
merit, and would not quite suit the taste of 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 101 

the reader accustomed to be pleased with the 
exciting literature of the present. It has 
been revised by its author, and a probable 
intention to republish it may be carried out 
some day. 

From London he went to France, made 
the tour of Normandy, then hastened to 
Paris, where he remained till late in the 
autumn. " One of the memorable sights in 
Paris was a grand review of the veteran 
French army, on its return from the Crimean 
war. Of one regiment, only three soldiers 
survived, who marched in their places, with 
wide intervals, indicating by the vacant 
spaces the everlastingly absent. I was near 
the emperor, and saw the tears roll down his 
cheeks at the pathetic sight." 

" After the leaves had fallen, I returned 
to America. My last absence had been 
nearly four years. My pleasant wander- 
jahre were ended, and before me was an un- 
known future of toil." 



XII. 

Once there was a man who had not where 
to lay his head. He was a wanderer through 
many lands, all his life long. He was 
a pilgrim from the cradle to the grave. 
Many lonely years went by, as his weary feet 
pressed upon the sands of time. His life 
was one long, pathetic story of one who loved 
home, and who never had one. He was the 
immortal author of " Home, Sweet Home." 

In the winter of 1859, Mr. Wight reached 
Boston, and in a few days went on to 
New York. Soon after, he purchased a 
house in First Place, Brooklyn. In this 
city he lived during the rest of the winter. 
When spring came he advertised for a small 
cottage situated in the country near New 
York. He received, among many replies, 
one from the village of Rye, on the border 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 103 

of Long Island Sound. On visiting the 
place, he found that the cottage suited him. 
He hired it, and moved there for the summer. 
A railroad ran through the village, and so it 
was easy to reach from the city. There were 
many pleasant drives about the country. The 
air was invigorating, and the soil was dry and 
healthy. The salt-water bathing was good, 
and the beach was not far away. He sold 
his house in Brooklyn, and never returned 
there to live. His idea was that he could 
take care of his ward and patient with more 
success in the country, — for so he called 
her who had been united to him by the 
solemn rites of the church as his wife, and 
whom, after his marriage, he had found to 
be an incurable epileptic, even from her 
earliest infancy. At Rye he was near enough 
to New York to make it easy for him to 
carry forward his plans in regard to literary 
work. 

In the ages past, where was once the 
stillness of the sea, and where at a later time 
the great ice-river, slowly, silently, and with 



104 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT- 

resistless energy, rolled down from the North- 
land to meet the restless, aggressive, and re- 
lentless tides and waves, there was a mighty 
war of the elements ; and in the ages that 
have come there is the solid land. Now the 
soft arms of the inner sea embrace the capes 
and jutlands along the tide- washed shore, 
where reigns a long peace for the advantage 
of man. This shore, " lying low, " was once 
mantled by the great ice-river that came 
down from the northern ice-sea. The 
ice-river, " making no haste, taking no rest," 
on its way to the prehistoric sea, wrote the 
telluric history of vanished ages upon the 
rocks and boulders that, like graven tablets, 
lie scattered here and there amidst the ruins 
of the past. " O Earth ! what changes 
thou hast seen ! " Where once the tides in 
the ancient sea and the ice-river, like mighty 
giants, contended for the mastery, there the 
earth, weary of the trouble, rose up and 
vanquished them both. All along this low, 
rocky shore that Long Island barricades 
from the turbulent and stormy Atlantic, 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 105 

miles upon miles from New York, are built 
the habitations of men. For the most part 
these men are ignorant of the wondrous 
history written in the soil and on the rocks 
upon which they daily tread. What matters 
this to them ? They have no hunger, no 
thirst, for such food and drink. How 
strangely different are men ! One sees in 
Nature a storehouse full of grain ; another 
sees a soul, speech, music, order, and ever- 
lasting motion. 

About twenty -five or thirty miles from 
New York, where the telluric forces were 
busy in the ages past, scooping out hollows 
for rivulets and sea-arms, and heaping up 
rocks and boulders that were borne down 
upon the great ice-river, is located the pleas- 
ant village of Eye, on a vale which runs 
along to the tide-water. There the ice-king 
came down the frozen river, in the glacial 
ages, and brought great loads of grim, graven 
rocks and boulders, and piled them up in 
scattered heaps ; and the mighty Norse god 
came along with him, holding his mighty 

5* 



106 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

hammer in his sinewy hand, and smote the 
rocks into pieces, which he scattered as he 
pursued his journey. In the fullness of 
time, when the Norse god and the ice- 
king went away, driven before the headlong 
south wind, spring and summer planted 
the primeval forest. After that, as time 
went on, man cut down the oak, the beech, 
and the maple, and cast them into the fire. 
Then mother Earth, grieving over her loss, 
evolved from her mysterious energies the 
mournful evergreen, and there grew the 
cedar. 

The old post-road ran along in front of 
the base of a rocky bank, which rose abruptly 
some twenty-five or more feet, overlooking 
the setting sun. From the crest of this 
bank the rock-strewn surface sloped gently 
toward the road that curved to the border of 
the sound. We frequently wandered over 
this wild landscape, and talked about its for- 
mation during the long years of the glacial 
age. It was a charming place, especially 
when the afternoon sun began to make long 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 107 

shadows with the evergreen cedars. One 
found a few gray old fruit-trees, covered 
with hoary moss, bearing scattered leaves, 
which vainly tried to hide bitter, untempting 
apples, one sided, rough, and rugged as the 
rocks upon which they fell. The first rays 
of the rising sun played through the trees 
and over the rocks. The place was in the 
midst of things, and yet so secluded that the 
passer-by could not intrude. It was almost 
a solitude, filled with the wondrous story of 
the past, breathing the mysterious spirit of 
nature, and abounding in exquisite scenery. 
Several acres of this rock-strewn, cedar- 
covered land were purchased. A few rods 
from the bank in front, which overlooks the 
highway, on a level place, among the over- 
arching trees, a clearing was made, the soil 
removed, and a cellar blasted in the ob- 
durate rock; and then upon a firmly laid 
foundation a beautiful cottage was built. 
When everything had been completed, at the 
close of summer, the place was called " The 
Cedars." The place was such as a man 



108 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

of literary tastes and ambition would select 
for a home. A library and study looked to- 
ward the afternoon sun as it mingled the 
shadows of the rocks and cedars, and con- 
tained the rare volumes and fine works of 
art collected during years of travel in other 
lands. Here he renewed his literary toil. 
He had studied art, literature, society, and 
government, among the civilized peoples of 
the world, and was equipped for new and 
important work. 

He arranged and edited a dozen volumes, 
entitled " The Home Library," which con- 
tained the biographies of the great men of 
the world, written by men of genius. It 
was in the scope of his ambition to intro- 
duce into the homes of America a higher 
grade of reading-matter. What could be 
more suitable, interesting, and instructive 
for his countrymen and their children to 
read, than the lives of the leading men of 
history, penned by the best authors? He 
would try to supplant the sentimental life 
of the hero of fiction by the real lives of 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 109 

such men as Washington, Columbus, Peter 
the Great, Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, and 
Oliver Cromwell. To these volumes he 
added in a short time an edition of more 
than a dozen volumes of the " French Clas- 
sics ; " the famous Riverside edition of Ba- 
con's works ; the novels of Dickens — the 
most human of writers of romance ; Mil- 
man's great work on Latin Christianity ; 
the essays of Thomas Carlyle; the miscel- 
lanies of Lord Macaulay ; an edition of 
Hazlitt's Montaigne ; translations of several 
of the works of Balzac ; a translation of 
Madame De StaeTs " Germany." In the 
mean time, he wrote a multitude of Review 
Articles, upon various vital questions of 
that day. 

To this earthly paradise, where nature had 
been prodigal with her gifts, and where man 
had reshaped nature, he took his ward and 
patient, who was his wife only in name, and 
tried to establish a home. It was a foolish 
thing to endeavor to conceal her disease 
from his friends and the world. It was 



110 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

an unmanly pride that led him to yield 
to her entreaties that he would be silent. 
This, like all untruth, has brought its ap- 
propriate reward. Yet it must be kept 
in mind that he was the literary man, the 
philosophic student, who at that time had no 
real knowledge of physiology and disease, 
and who, with all the force of a poetic im- 
agination, magnified the influence of mind 
and soul over matter. Perhaps he was 
not entirely without hope that the light 
might yet shine upon the spirit sitting in 
darkness. Although, when he remembered 
that she had been an epileptic from infancy, 
and that the best medical skill in Europe 
had failed to cure her, he seemed to be con- 
vinced that it no longer did any good to 
hope against hope. Added to his great lit- 
erary labors was the difficult task of caring 
for her. " More than twenty women, old 
and young, were tried as hired nurses, com- 
panions, or housekeepers. Not one of them 
would do. Some of them would flee from 
the room in terror when my patient had an 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. Ill 

attack. Some would hold up their hands 
in hopeless bewilderment. Others would sit 
down and cry with that natural sympathy 
for suffering which wells up from woman's 
heart, and for which God be praised." 

In an incurable epileptic, there is dreamy 
indifference to-day, and to-morrow there will 
be tearful despondency ; on the next day 
great perversity of motive and conduct ap- 
pear; then follow increased irritability ac- 
companied by illusions, hallucinations, and 
delusions. Then comes the fearful attack 
which has given the disease the name of " the 
falling sickness." After these hours and 
days of depression and darkness, the unde- 
veloped or impaired faculties emerge into a 
light that shines with a little more clearness. 
In the days and hours of trouble the epilep- 
tic requires constant and faithful watching 
and protection. In the intervals, when rea- 
son assumes control to some extent, company 
may be seen, or a journey undertaken, but 
only under the care of a faithful attendant. 
And while he was doing the best he could 



112 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

under the trying circumstances, there were 
people, ignorant of the nature of her disease 
and deficient in Christian charity, who gra- 
tuitously attributed her moods, her sympa- 
thies, her symptoms, and her fearful malady 
to ill-treatment, neglect, and cruelty. 

There sit the solitary hours ; there rise 
the healing streams ; there moan the wan- 
dering winds ; there vanish the setting suns, 
all the summer long ; and the destiny of 
man unfolds itself like the evolution of a 
flower which comes and goes, rises and 
falls, to silence and rest. 



XIII. 

Let us stop for a moment and view the 
spectacle of a civil war, gigantic, terrible, 
and unrelenting, carrying affliction and sor- 
row to millions of human hearts. Derang- 
ing the plans and disappointing the hopes 
of so many, it changed the destiny of a 
great nation ; it conferred freedom on a 
despised race, and made the idea of lib- 
erty regnant in every heart. In all war 
there are ideas contending for mastery. 
In the civil war universal liberty was striv- 
ing against slavery. The pregnant say- 
ing in the sunny South, during the later 
years, that it was the rich man's war and 
the poor man's fight, probes the question 
deeply. In the South, there was the white 
man of low estate, as well as the black 
man in bondage, on the one hand ; and on 
the other, there was a proud and dom- 



114 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

inant aristocracy, on whose banner was era- 
blazoned the talismanic name — Democracy. 
In the North were millions of freemen 
who wanted government by the people and 
for the people. The principles of self-gov- 
ernment, they felt, were committed to their 
care and safe-keeping. Human liberty, with 
all that it meant for them and their children, 
was too priceless to give up without a heroic 
struggle. And we now feel that all the 
treasure which has been paid and all the 
blood which has been shed have not been 
paid and shed in vain. To guard the temple 
of human liberty the sons of the Republic 
stood with a wall of bayonets against the 
aggressive hosts of the slaveholders' aris- 
tocracy. What was the fight? It was a 
mighty struggle of the people against an 
ambitious aristocracy, whose purpose and 
design were concealed by the magic name 
which stood for popular government. It 
will now be written upon the page of his- 
tory that the people came off victors, — but 
at a fearful cost of blood and treasure : that 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 115 

the heroic efforts of the brave men of an 
unhappy cause ended in defeat and union ; 
and that the tide of human advancement 
and progress was not turned backward, but 
that it will flow on and on, for all time, as 
we fondly hope, bringing peace, prosperity, 
knowledge, reverence, liberty, and happi- 
ness into millions of homes. 

At the time the civil war broke out, Mr. 
Wight was doing business with five pub- 
lishing firms ; four of them failed. Lit- 
erature does not always flourish among men 
who take to destroying each other. The 
man who goes to war wants powder and ball 
and something to eat ; he does not take to 
poetry and philosophy, — he becomes a prac- 
tical realist. The result was that The Cedars 
had to be sold to meet pressing obligations. 
That which had been called home must be 
left behind. In this world we build for 
others, yet in more ways than one we carry 
away with us a mental picture of the habita- 
tion we build, and the hand of change rests 
on this picture, too. But there is one picture 



116 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

that cannot be taken away from us. It is 
like the masterpieces, whose form and color 
and spirit have been seized by genius and 
spread on canvas. The best points of a 
landscape — that which is beautiful ; that 
which speaks, as if with a voice ; that which 
makes music all the summer long ; that 
which blends with living motion ; that which 
has no place for the sentiment of decay ; 
that which sees the eternity of ceaseless and 
silent change — come out from the paint- 
ing to-day, to-morrow, and every other day. 
And we, too, have that which defies the in- 
fluence and power of change, it is that part 
of us which comes from the Eternal — and 
is immortal. 

He went, perhaps by chance, to settle at 
Carbondale, in a beautiful upland valley in 
Pennsylvania, one that reminds us of the 
famous valley of Wyoming. The home 
there was called Brookside, and may be de- 
scribed by extracts from his letters : — 

" The climate is superb. This upland val- 
ley is one of the most beautiful and one of 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 117 

the most healthy in the world. The air is 
perfect balm to my semi-rheumatic nature, 
and I have been nowhere in America so well 
as here. 

"The place altogether surpasses my ex- 
pectations. There is wealth, intelligence, 
and refinement in the town, accompanied by 
a real inland simplicity of manner, and a 
much higher moral tone than that of the 
great cities. Our neighbors are perfect, as 
neighbors — friendly, unofficious, right-in- 
tentioned, well-behaved, and not selfish. I 
have no fear of their trying to steal my 
house and lands. 

"My house here is really beautiful and 
convenient. It is a good deal better in every 
way than the Rye house. There are ten 
acres of lawn about the house filled with fine 
orchard. I have been repainting the house, 
fixing plumbing, and laying down sixty rods 
of iron pipe, bringing a spring brook to the 
house. I have been trouting twice with em- 
inent success. Trout are good and cheap, 
and life is pleasant here." 



118 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

He lets the unchangeable past take care 
of itself. Regret, like remorse, eats into the 
heart and soul. And so he looks forward. 
Satisfied and delighted with his new home, 
he names it " Brookside." His restless spirit 
goes to work again. 

" All things have rest ; why should we toil alone, 
We only toil who are the first of things." 

The following extracts from his letters will 
show what he was doing about this time : — 

" I am working very hard on Martin's 
" History of France." I am to have one vol- 
ume ready for the press by January 1st. 
The whole work is in seventeen volumes, the 
greatest historic work of our times. The 
author has labored on it for thirty years. It 
is not very easy to translate, and the amount 
of matter is immense. 

" We have fought the great fight of the 
war here in Pennsylvania. I was on the 
stump during the canvass, and have made 
myself a name in this whole region. It was 
a hard battle, and the consequences of the 
victory are immense." 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 119 

This refers to the campaign for the re- 
election of Abraham Lincoln. The great 
and pathetic personification of the toiling 
masses, his great heart beat in every 
word of his passionate appeal to the men 
of the South : " We are not enemies, but 
friends. We must not be enemies. Though 
passion may have strained, it must not break 
our bonds of affection. The mystic chords 
of memory, stretching from every battlefield 
and patriot-grave to every living heart and 
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet 
swell the chorus of the Union when again 
touched, as they surely will be, by the better 
angels of our nature." 

Mr. Wight had read medicine in a gen- 
eral way, as one reads literature and history, 
for the purpose of acquiring knowledge. 
This was part of his purpose to become mas- 
ter of human knowledge, for he was ambi- 
tious to be learned in all things. At this 
time it occurred to him that he would com- 
plete his medical education. Then he could 
apply his knowledge to practical use, for the 



120 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

benefit of others, and for the advantage of 
himself. In 1864 he went to New York, and 
attended a course of lectures at the College 
of Physicians and Surgeons, one of the fa- 
mous medical schools in America. In the 
following year he attended another course 
of lectures at the Long Island College Hos- 
pital, which had been instrumental in intro- 
ducing improved methods of clinical instruc- 
tion. At this school, which is located in the 
city of Brooklyn, he received the degree of 
Doctor of Medicine, in 1865. 

He returned to Carbondale, and began the 
practice of his profession, and was successful 
from the outset. He was a nurse, as well as 
a physician, for he had been trained in a 
school where duty and pity dominated the 
heart. What office is greater than that per- 
formed by the magnanimous and sympathetic 
physician ? To help when help we can, to 
soothe and comfort when there is no hope, 
make the highest duty of man to man. 

To practice medicine, to make books, or 
to " take the stump " is easy enough for an 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 121 

aspiring and vigorous nature, but add to this 
a great sorrow and a consuming care, and 
we need not be surprised to hear a complaint. 
We make extracts from letters : — 

" It has become impossible to take care of 
my ' charge ' any longer in a domestic way. 
The asylum is the proper place for her. The 
insanity springing from her disease is becom- 
ing more and more manifest ; it is more and 
more troublesome to take care of her; in 
short, it is a moral impossibility to solve the 
tough problem in any other way. 

" It is a sad necessity, but I see no help 
for it. It is a burden that I have borne for 
a dozen years with a moral heroism no mor- 
tal has any means of knowing ; but I cannot 
bear it longer — it would kill me, and 
then she would have to be placed in an 
asylum under less favorable circumstances 
and with less care." 

There was a correspondence in regard to 
this matter, with a view to placing the unfor- 
tunate in the care of a good asylum. Some 
letters written by the author, partly from a 

6J 



122 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

professional standpoint, partly with kind 
suggestions, and partly with gentle admoni- 
tions, had such an effect as to make her 
more manageable during her lucid moments. 
Again he wrote : — 

" My friends, coming to know the situation, 
advised an asylum. My heart revolted 
against that, and it still revolts against it, 
although I have had, for a long time, an 
arrangement with a noble friend of mine, 
the honored head of a New England asylum, 
to care for her, in case of my death or some 
imperative necessity." Then adds : " I shall 
care for her as long as it is possible." 

He had made the mystic journey of the 
East, visiting many lands. Then he had 
crossed the storm-troubled Atlantic. After 
that he built a home among the cedars. He 
left the evergreens and they shall know him 
no more. He looks toward the setting sun, 
and finds a new home in one of the upland 
valleys of Pennsylvania. Then he leaves 
that too, never to return. Indeed, there 
is nothing in this world more eternal than 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W, WIGHT. 123 

change. He now turns his face again to- 
wards the West. Even yet he clings to her 
whom he had years before made the idol 
of his heart. She cannot make him happy, 
and without her he is miserable. Would 
that we could cure the incurable ! Would 
that Fate might retrieve the unhappy dis- 
aster ! 

" The hills are shadows and they flow 

From form to form, aud nothing stands ; 
They melt like mist, the solid lands, 
Like clouds they shape themselves and go," 

" I would not let one cry 
Whom I could save ! How can it be that Brahm 
Would make a world and keep it miserable, 
Since, if all-powerful, he leaves it so, 
He is not good, and if not powerful, 
He is not God ? . . . 
. . . Mine eyes have seen enough ! " 



XIV. 

When we write history, we must write 
the truth ; we may not write things as we 
wish them to be ; we may not conceal things 
that are essential ; we must relate what has 
been, as nearly as possible in the way that 
it occurred. It is just so with biography. 
We may not omit important facts and events ; 
for it may happen that what we could 
wish to be otherwise may indeed be that 
which is most essential. Sometimes it hap- 
pens that the better part of our nature is 
brought out in what we deem to be our 
calamities, and that our misfortunes which 
we shrink from show us to best advantage, 
although we could wish that they had not 
come to us. In order that the meaning of 
the evidence may not be changed, as it re- 
lates to certain facts, it is given in such 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 125 

form as to make it more like autobiography. 
This evidence is made up of extracts from 
letters, as well as matter written for the 
press. 

" At length, from a respectable family 
that had known me from my youth, came, 
half a dozen years ago, a good lady, edu- 
cated, intelligent, refined, to spend the sum- 
mer with us. She at once showed herself 
capable of taking care of my incurable epi- 
leptic patient in an efficient and friendly 
manner. She won the confidence and sym- 
pathy of my poor child, and won my ever- 
lasting gratitude. 

" An efficient friend could not always 
remain with us. My nominal wife, my 
epileptic ward, could not bear to part with 
her ' Aunt Kate,' as she familiarly and 
affectionately called her. A recurrence to 
the old method of housekeeping was an im- 
possibility. Boarding was attended with the 
same difficulties. Two persons were neces- 
sary for the care of an epileptic who could 
never be left safely alone, except for some 
hours on particular da}^s. 



126 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

" A new plan was proposed by my patient 
herself ; at first in jest, then in earnest. 
The nominal tie between us should be sev- 
ered, and then she might have two, instead 
of one, to take care of her. It will be said 
that no wife could make such a proposition. 
Verily, no wife could. Let it be remem- 
bered that she was wife only in name ; in 
reality, adopted child. She had come to 
regard it as religiously wrong to think of 
fulfilling the relations of wife, in her con- 
dition. She ardently desired to be released 
from the responsibilities of a station she 
could not fill. When asked by me — with 
the ulterior object of divorce in view — to 
assume the place required of her by the 
esteemed bond of our union, she revolted, and 
remained extremely unhappy till she discov- 
ered my true meaning. A simple attestation 
of this attitude on her part satisfied the 
letter of the law. There was no witness 
against her, except in the technical sense of 
the courts. The testimony, as seen from 
this point of view of our real life, was for 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 127 

her, and as she wished it. The truth, the 
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, was 
told by the only one who had the secret of 
our hearts. That truth satisfied the law's 
letter, while its just and pure spirit was sat- 
isfied by the purity and justice of our aims. 
" In order, however, to satisfy some scru- 
ples of conscience, we made a first attempt 
to procure a divorce on the naked merits of 
the case, under that clause in the Indiana 
law giving the judge power to release from 
the bonds of matrimony when, in his opinion, 
it is best for all parties concerned. The 
cause of our failure is not a matter of public 
interest. We succeeded elsewhere. Two 
months after the divorce was procured I 
married again. The divorced wife stood by 
our side with her attorney during the cere- 
mony, to signify her approbation in the 
strongest manner. The marriage was pri- 
vate, in our own rooms. As the clergyman 
pronounced the last words of the service, she 
said, in a clear, firm tone : ' It is all just 
as I want it.' The marriage was solemnized 



128 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

in the presence of a dozen Christian men 
and women, representatives of some of the 
best families in the city, who would not have 
sanctioned an iniquitous thing. The clergy- 
man, pastor of one of the leading churches 
in the place, who performed the ceremony, 
had lived in rooms adjoining ours all winter, 
and knew us well. 

" At the close of the ceremony, myself 
and wife, adopted the former wife in the most 
solemn religious manner, promising to keep 
her with us, to care for her, cherish, and 
support her as long as she is spared to us, 
as we hope for mercy at the judgment seat. 
That adoption is in the form of a document, 
signed by us, witnessed by those present at 
the ceremony, and left in the hands of a 
distinguished clergyman, open at all times 
to right-minded persons for inspection. Be- 
fore our marriage we signed legal bonds, 
binding ourselves in heavy penalties, to the 
same effect. These bonds are in the hands 
of her attorney, where they will remain, and 
may be seen by properly-intentioned people. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 129 

" All these details are painful to me in 
the extreme, but the wide circulation given 
by respectable journals to the attack leaves 
me no alternative. In Christian charity I 
have been willing to believe that sympathy 
for an afflicted, helpless woman, that indig- 
nation for her supposed wrongs, were motives 
of the writer of that article. Whoever you 
are that wrote it, I assure you, in the blessed 
spirit of forgiveness, that your sympathy 
seems to its unfortunate object but an im- 
pertinent mockery. In her disease, which 
has been laid upon her, perhaps the heaviest 
physical calamity of mortal life, she is sur- 
rounded with tried affection in those who 
have cheerfully suffered, and will continue 
cheerfully to suffer for her sake, and she 
begs, for the dear Redeemer's sake, to be 
spared the meddlesomeness of those who are 
strangers, and necessarily must be strangers, 
to our inner life. 

" Thus, with the Maker of heaven and 
earth looking into my heart, have I written 
the simple truth in regard to this matter. 

6* 



130 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

If the world, with exact knowledge of the 
facts, blames me, I shall bear it meekly, 
hopefully. 

" My poor child is more than satisfied. 
She is positively happy about the arrange- 
ment. I have taken the only course possible 
whereby I could longer stand between her 
and a perpetual asylum. I thank God for 
a noble-hearted, self-sacrificing woman to 
share my burden*with me. 

" Besides, my defense brings me by every 
mail letters from some of the noblest men 
and women in the land, all of them express- 
ing sympathy, many of them making offers 
of service. 

" Many good men and women are, at the 
present time, intimate with the family, and 
cheerfully testify that she is tenderly cared 
for, and is as happy as her physical condition 
will permit. Wise neighboring women, who 
are intimate with the household, declare 
truly that she has never mentally developed 
out of childhood into womanhood, and has 
no conception of what a wifes love for a 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 131 

husband means. Those who know the 
parties best give them credit for Christian 
virtue and goodness. 

" Fortunately, however, the greater num- 
ber of households are still sanctuaries of pure 
affection, homes of domestic virtue, nurseries 
of patriotism, shrines of morality, fountains 
of chastity. Most married pairs cannot com- 
prehend why people should wish to be di- 
vorced. Their greatest happiness is in their 
union ; no unhappiness would be so great to 
them as separation. They toil on patiently 
amid the storms and trials of life, comforted 
by an affection as constant as the throbbing 
of the heart. The benediction of heaven is 
on their labors, and the prattle of children 
by the hearthstone is music to them sweeter 
than the symphonies of Beethoven'or Mozart, 
more sacred than the Stabat Mater or the 
Miserere. The rewards of obedience to the 
Almighty are great, even in this world. 

" ' In the Christian family,' to use the 
beautiful language of Clement of Alexan- 
dria, ' the mother is the glory of the chil- 
dren, the wife is the glory of her husband, 



132 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

both are the glory of the wife, God is the 
glory of all together.' ' How can I paint,' 
says Tertullian, 'the happiness of a mar- 
riage which the church ratifies, . . . the ben- 
ediction seals, angels announce, the Father 
declares valid ? . . . What a union of two 
believers, one hope, one vow, one discipline, 
and one worship ! . . . They pray together, 
fast together, instruct, exhort, and support 
each other. They go together to the church 
of God, and to the table of the Lord. They 
share each other's tribulations and persecu- 
tions. Neither conceals anything from the 
other; neither avoids, neither annoys the 
other. They delight to visit the sick, supply 
the needy, give alms without constraint, and 
in daily zeal lay their offerings before the 
altar without scruple or hindrance. . . . 
Psalms and hymns they sing together, and 
they vie with each other in praising God. 
Christ rejoices when He sees and hears this. 
He gives them his peace. When two are 
together in his name, there is He ; and 
where He is, there the Evil One cannot 



come.' ' : 



XV. 

Aftek long, toilsome, and weary years, 
with their experience, success, and disap- 
pointment, from the time he set out homeless 
to make his way in the world, animated with 
pure motives and dominated by high re- 
solves, manfully contending against the blows 
of fortune, seeking the association of the 
learned, longing for the company of the wise, 
needing the presence of gifted minds, wan- 
dering through the mystic lands of the East, 
awaiting a destiny commensurate with his 
ambition, tossed by the storms of a varied 
life, gaining the approval of noble souls, 
calumniated by the ignorant and unthink- 
ing, trying to build for himself a home, turn- 
ing with mournful courage toward the past, 
looking into the unknown future with hope 
and faith, solving rightly and well, as he 



134 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

thought and believed, the " tough problem " 
of his destiny, he would now dwell under his 
own vine and fig tree. 

Only memories would now cluster around 
Brookside. It was a thing of the past. He 
went to New Albany, Indiana, where he re- 
mained a time with a few faithful friends. 
Thence, in the year 1867, he went to Ocono- 
mowoc, Wisconsin, and there settled, as he 
hoped and supposed, away from the turmoil 
and strife of the world. There he began 
again the practice of his profession. Rest 
and relief had not yet come. Outrageous 
fortune would not be appeased. He was 
pursued by invisible enemies, and open hos- 
tility met him at every step. A man of less 
strength and courage would have gone down 
under the weight of calumny, and one who 
had not the sense of being; right would have 
retreated, when so many had it in their 
hearts to condemn. 

He had been confirmed at New Albany by 
Bishop Talbot. He and his wife attended 
church at Oconomowoc, and both went to 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 135 

the communion. Some objections were raised, 
and the matter was referred to good Bishop 
Kemper, of Wisconsin. He said that he had 
no objection. The Rector, Rev. Ezra Jones, 
was a true, firm, and noble friend. His 
good wife, when a widow, writing to her 
husband's brother long years after, said : 
" And so Dr. Wight is gone, at rest at last, 
after a very varied life. Your brother was 
a true friend to him when most others con- 
demned. That he was a good man, I never 
doubted." What a blessed thing true and 
tried friendship is in this world ; not that 
which comes from the thunders of Sinai, but 
that which springs from the benedictions of 
Bethlehem. 

The character of this friend is indicated, 
by an episode in his life. Born in New 
Hampshire, educated at Vermont University, 
prepared for the ministry in New York city, 
and a missionary in Minnesota, he became 
rector of an aristocratic country parish in 
South Carolina. After the election of Mr. 
Lincoln, the spirit of sectional feeling was so 



136 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

intense that he was warned to leave the 
South, since he announced that he was for the 
Union. " Such was the state of feeling then 
in South Carolina that some of his parish- 
ioners who connived at his escape incurred 
danger of violence from more ferocious 
neighbors on account of their humane act. 
He sent away his wife with a babe in her 
arms, and three or four small children by 
her side, on the train for Louisville. He 
and his Southern friends judged that they 
would be safer without him than with him. 
Leaving his furniture and his books behind 
him, he started off alone, and after a long 
and weary journey through the mountains, 
found his way to the uprising North. He 
never would relate, even to his most intimate 
friends, all the incidents of that journey. 
Separated from his wife and babes, not 
knowing whether he should behold them 
again in this world, hunted by men madly 
thirsting for the blood of their Northern 
brethren, footsore, discouraged, anxious for 
his country, half broken-hearted, he strug- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 137 

gled forward amid the wild preparations for 
civil war, protected — again to use his own 
reverent phrase — by the good Lord. At 
length he had the happiness of again 
meeting his family in Vermont. In the 
perils and hardships of that escape from 
South Carolina a delicate constitution re- 
ceived so rude a shock' that he never fully 
recovered from its effects. Subsequently he 
settled in the beautiful village of Oconomo- 
woc, in this State. The war ended as he 
had foretold to the hotspurs of his South 
Carolina parish, with disaster to them. 
Many of them perished on the field of battle. 
The collapse of the rebellion left their wid- 
ows and orphans in poverty. Again and 
again has that good minister, scarcely letting 
his left hand know what his right hand did, 
sent back from his scanty earnings aid to 
the poor of his old Southern parish ; poor 
now, affluent before the war. Individuals 
there who took part in driving him away on 
account of his Union sentiments have, since 
the close of the rebellion, written him, in an- 



swer to his charity, letters of gratitude and 
repentance that would melt the heart of a 
stone." 

" I was sick and ye visited me. Inasmuch 
as ye have done it to the least of these, 
ye have done it unto me." Heaven only 
knows how many good deeds are recorded 
elsewhere, that are not written here. How 
wonderful will be the reading on the pages, 
when the great book of Christian altruism 
shall be opened ! It will disclose an epic 
greater than any ever yet written by man. 
It will call forth an anthem more pathetic 
than any ever heard by mortal ears. It will 
invoke a laudamus incomparably above all 
that it has entered into the heart of man to 
conceive. When sickness and injury enter 
the hut or palace, the physician goes with 
an " equal foot " and knocks at the door of 
both, to bring such aid as men can to those 
who are in need, and shrinks not from con- 
tagion, or pestilence, or sudden danger ; 
magnanimous, faithful, altruistic, he performs 
an immortal work, as he visits the least of 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 139 

the sons of man. The deep shadows of the 
night fall over his way ; the winds sing or 
moan among the leaves as he passes; the 
storm beats upon him without pity ; the un- 
feeling cold benumbs the fibres of his body ; 
the silent stars keep watch above his head, 
and then he goes into the very presence of 
pain and grief, his deed being twice blessed 
if he can heal them both, and his work re- 
ceiving a benediction when he cannot cure. 
He stands side by side with that other doctor 
who ministers to the pain and grief of the 
mind and soul. 

Dr. O. W. Wight undertook the arduous 
duties of a country practice, going at all 
times, day and night, in sunshine and in 
storm, to succor and relieve the sick and 
wounded. Those who had been injured or 
were sick appealed to his sympathy. There 
was sure to be a cheerful response. In the 
sick-room he was always welcome. It was 
a blessed thing for him to aid and help 
others. He inspired confidence and hope, 
and when hope fled, there was left a feeling 



140 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

that no one could do more. He had an ex- 
cellent measure of success, all that any one 
could have there. He had the success which 
comes to the true physician, which is not 
measured by gain, but that which comes to 
the good and faithful servant. He was a 
great worker, and work for him was worship. 
In this way he sought the evolution of his 
mind and soul, and he seemed to be the 
same cheerful and hopeful person after he 
had been assailed by the slings and arrows 
of fortune. 

The days were again tranquil. He had 
left the stormy sea. It was pleasant to be 
near the borders of the lakes of Wisconsin. 
Memory ran back to the lakes of the English 
poets, and recalled the vision of Lake Erie. 
Then toil for the good of others threw for- 
getfulness over the painful memories of the 
past. It seemed as if life was new again. 
As he has left the impression, — perhaps 
almost a story, a kind of tradition, — one 
can see him standing on the bridge which 
spans the clear water falling into the little 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 141 

lake. He seems to be thinking of his mystic 
journey in the East and combining its visions 
with the pictures of the newer West. 

" Hence, in a season of calm weather, 

Though inland far we be, 
Our souls have a sight of that immortal sea 

Which brought us hither, 

Can in a moment travel thither ; 
And see the children sport upon the shore, 
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore." 

" And I have felt 
A presence which disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interposed, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion, and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts, 
And rolls through all things." 

Time goes on. It is going on always. 
Space expands. It expands everywhere. 
Time's on-going cannot cease. Space can- 
not limit its expansion. Yesterday becomes 
to-day, and to-day will have another shape 



142 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

to-morrow. We are here to-day, and will 
be somewhere else to-morrow ; and so we 
move in the abyss of endless expansion. As 
it were, we are on a ship which sails upon 
the great sea of life. This sea is fathomless 
everywhere, and boundless on every hand. 
Now comes the storm. After that we have 
the calm, and even then " the waters heave 
around us," and we may hold it good to love 
the tranquil places betwixt the storms, and 
drink in all their delights. Yet we may 
hold it well, perhaps, to dread the storms, 
and shrink from their embrace. But with 
Him whose blessed feet walked upon the 
troubled sea, we may have no fear. 

In Palestine, on the main road to Hebron, 
a small town of great antiquity is situated 
upon a limestone ridge. The name of this 
town is Bethlehem, or the House of Bread. 
Of this place Shakespeare sang : — 

" Over whose acres walked those blessed feet 
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed 
For our advantage on the bitter cross." 

In later years, a Bethlehem in the sub- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 143 

urbs of old London was seized and made 
a prison for the unfortunate who had " lost 
their reason," and the beautiful word " Beth- 
lehem " was crushed into the madman's word 
" Bedlam." Ah ! which shall it be, Bed- 
lam, or Bethlehem ? She had been his be- 
trothed ; she had been his wife ; she was 
his patient ; she was his ward ; she was his 
child ; she was his sister. She was unfor- 
tunate ; she became more and more un- 
fortunate ; she can no longer live with the 
world ; she may not see the madman's Bed- 
lam ; she may go to Bethlehem. Thither, 
after all these long years, he takes his 
adopted daughter, — only those who knew 
him well could tell how kindly and with 
what tearless grief, — and leaves her in care 
of the blessed sisters. 

Soon after there came the brief announce- 
ment, — My wife is at rest. He laid her at 
rest with his children, for they had also gone. 
He sold out everything, and owed no man 
anything. He was again homeless. He 
had only one friend left, — his pet dog, — 



144 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

linking him to those he loved and who had 
departed. 

" Should the whole frame of earth by inward throes 
Be wrenched, or fire come down from far to scorch 
Her pleasant habitations, and dry up 
Old ocean, in his bed left singed and bare, 
Yet would the living Presence still subsist." 



XVI. 

Late in the autumn of 1871, 0. W. 
Wight went to Brooklyn, where he remained 
during the winter, with his brother, J. S. 
Wight, and where he secured needed rest 
and recuperation. He had given up his 
practice at Oconomowoc, and was again 
homeless ; and yet he was looking forward, 
in the same hopeful, cheerful way, as ever. 
At the same time he seemed to feel that he 
had received a severe blow, that he had suf- 
fered a great calamity, that it was cruel to 
take away from him everything in this world 
he held dear. But his thoughts were busy 
with problems relating to the great North- 
west, and he took more than a passing inter- 
est in its affairs. He had faith in its re- 
sources and possibilities, as well as the men 
who had gone there to live. He looked upon 

7 



146 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

these men as having industry, enterprise, 
ambition, and personal liberty. The broad 
acres of fertile sea-girt lands were sustaining 
a people who had faith in themselves and 
hope in the future. The well to-do New 
Englander, the toiling Scandinavian, the 
home-loving German, converged there, and 
mingled their life blood into a stream of 
vital unity. This stream flows on into the 
future, bearing upon its tide the grandest 
hopes and possibilities. Divergent and dif- 
ferentiated branches of the Aryan race were 
uniting with a common purpose, and would 
have a common destiny. Their gain and 
their elevation were full of meaning to all 
men who toil. 

On his way east, while passing through 
the State of Pennsylvania, he had the mis- 
fortune to lose his pet dog, which acciden- 
tally escaped from the car, as the train 
stopped at one of the interior towns. The 
train went on, and the two friends were sep- 
arated. One went on to Brooklyn ; the 
other wandered about the strange streets. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 147 

But so strong was his attachment to the now 
homeless dog, that he went back and hunted 
him up, finding him in the care of a kind 
woman. He returned with him and both 
were happy. And then he wrote the ro- 
mance of his pet dog. But like so many- 
other things in this world, both romance and 
dog have disappeared. 

While in Brooklyn he wrote short articles 
for the Milwaukee Sentinel, mostly on polit- 
ical topics. He had been born and brought 
up a Democrat. He was one of the people, 
and was for them and their government. 
But when a slaveholder's aristocracy put on 
the garb of Democracy, he allied himself 
with the Republican Party and helped elect 
Abraham Lincoln. When the power of this 
aristocracy had been broken, when the Union 
had been preserved, and when certain Repub- 
lican leaders became the willing instruments 
of monopoly, and were reaching after power 
and influence which were almost imperial 
and absolute, he longed for the Democracy 
of the immortal founders of the Republic. 



148 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

When the rights and liberties of the toiling 
masses were imperiled he moved with fear- 
less energy to their defense. He was against 
the mind that falsified the principles of eter- 
nal justice. He spurned the man who did 
not come with an open hand into the pres- 
ence of those who toil. He had no sympathy 
with those who heap up fabulous wealth from 
the earnings of the men who swing the axe 
and hammer, who dig and plough the soil, 
who drill and blast the rocks, who build of 
wood and stone, and who are the hope of 
their country's highest good. 

The following paragraphs, taken from his 
address to representative citizens of Wiscon- 
sin, contain the highest political wisdom, as 
well as the best principles of statesmanship : 

" In calling this convention to order, it 
seems to me necessary to give a reason for 
our political course. Briefly as possible I 
will state the principles which ought to guide 
us in adhering to, or in departing from, ex- 
isting parties. 

"Man's first allegiance is to the eternal 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 149 

source of justice. The Euler of the universe 
claims and enforces our fealty. A higher 
law, symbolized in the order of the world, 
woven into the web of intellectual and moral 
life, ever demands human obedience. To 
the will of the Sovereign of heaven and earth 
every mortal must yield assent. 

" The state is founded upon this abiding 
government of the world. The architects of 
human governments build more or less wisely, 
according to their clearer or obscurer vision 
of the indestructible good. As a rule, gov- 
ernments are abiding in proportion to the 
amount of God's justice which they embody. 

" It is, therefore, in the nature of things, 
that men owe only a secondary allegiance to 
the state. We are bound in obedience to 
the government under which we live, so long 
as that government conforms to the higher 
law. When, in the progress of society, the 
judgment and the conscience of the public 
are developed into antagonism with the gov- 
ernment, it is the duty of a people to change 
an older and lower form of government for 



150 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

a higher and better. The right of revolution 
is founded upon the obligation of fealty to 
unchangeable justice. Our fathers broke 
their allegiance to the government under 
which they were born, and instituted another, 
in order to secure for themselves and their 
posterity the broader liberty that springs 
from the embodiment of ampler justice in 
the state. They recurred to the common 
duty of mankind to translate their progres- 
sive enlightenment into civil and political 
institutions. The Declaration of Indepen- 
dence expresses in lofty form the ethics of 
revolution, and stands as the highest chapter 
in the gospel of liberty. . . . 

" As the fabled Egyptian phoenix, when 
it had grown old, burned itself in the temple 
of the sun, but from the ashes sprang up a 
new phoenix, destined to live its allotted 
time ; so from the embers of a perished party, 
consumed in the flame of a civil war, rises 
the new party, which is already rejoicing in 
its strength. The party of spoliation, the 
revived Federal Party, may rake unmolested 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 151 

in the ashes for proofs of vanished political 
sins. Leaving antagonism behind us, ours 
shall be the noble task of restoring wise and 
frugal government, or restoring peace, lib- 
erty, and safety to the whole nation. 

" They tell us there are no issues requiring 
the formation of a new political organization. 
As the Democratic Party perished by becom- 
ing the instrument of slavery, so the Repub- 
lican Party is perishing as the instrument of 
monopoly. A spontaneous organization took 
place among the people, fifteen or twenty 
years ago, to resist the encroachments of the 
slave power. The like process is going on 
to-day to resist the power of monopoly. The 
principles of Jefferson were violated towards 
four millions of black men. From the mouth 
of their labor was taken the bread it earned. 
The same principles are now violated towards 
ten millions of toiling white men. From the 
mouth of their labor is taken much of the 
bread it earns. While two hundred millions 
of dollars are collected from the people by a 
tariff, for the expenses of government, a 



152 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

greater sum is transferred from their hard 
earnings to the coffers of a few, through the 
monopolies created by the same tariff. The 
producers of the country are paying every 
year dividends on a thousand millions of 
4 watered ' railway stocks and construction 
8 ring ' steals. We have not at this time a 
wise and frugal government that restrains 
men from injuring one another. We have 
instead, an unwise and expensive paternalism 
that does not leave men free to regulate their 
own pursuits of industry and improvement. 
Arrayed against the people at this very hour 
are corporations whose aggregate income 
greatly exceeds that of the national govern- 
ment. The party in" power is allied with 
these corporations. It can no more break 
with them than the old Democracy could 
break with the owners of slaves. It was 
necessary to organize a great political party 
to deliver four millions of ignorant blacks 
from injustice ; still more is it now necessary 
to organize a new party to deliver from in- 
justice ten millions of intelligent white men. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 153 

No issues ! The uprising of the people, 
north, south, east, and west will soon teach 
the old leaders that it is time to stop fighting 
in the graveyard of the past, to heed the 
duties of the living present. 

" Representatives of the citizens of Wis- 
consin, I have encountered many obstacles in 
my endeavor to bring you here together. 
Earnest conviction has alone nerved me to 
the task. I am not an office seeker. I 
never held an office in my life. Make no 
effort here or elsewhere to nominate me for 
an office, for I shall not accept. Moreover, 
if any man comes among you seeking his 
own self, let him lose it. Animated by a 
common purpose of elevating the tone of 
public life, of redressing wrongs, of deliver- 
ing from oppression, of rebuking corruption, 
of establishing equal justice for all, let us 
become genuine, disinterested political re- 
formers." 

One characteristic of O. W. Wight, ap- 
parent in his life, and often mentioned by 
himself, was that he looked upon what came 

7* 



154 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

to his hand to do as a problem to be solved. 
He put all his purpose, energy, and strength 
into his work, with the idea of making it the 
best possible under the circumstances. It 
was a problem to solve ; it was a piece of 
work to do. In the work he found his dut} r , 
and that satisfied his heart. In the problem 
he found intellectual activity, and that satis- 
fied his brain. In the consentaneous results 
of both the duty and the problem he found 
a sense of approbation and encouragement, 
and that satisfied his soul. And when he 
had mastered the elements and principles of 
one thing, he moved upon the citadel of 
another. So when the old leaders, unmind- 
ful of the dangers and perils, refused to 
weigh anchor, declining to set sail upon the 
great sea of political reform, he left them 
to wander and dig among the ghosts and ashes 
of the dead past. He had performed his 
duty ; he had solved the problem for himself ; 
as they would not follow, he did not remain. 
He " stumped " the State of Wisconsin, 
in the interests of political reform. There 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 155 

was no doubt about the venality and corrup- 
tion that had invaded the Republican Party. 
That party had, in a great measure, served its 
purpose, and was outliving its usefulness. 
It began to be a house divided against itself. 
The Democratic Party had been put out of 
power and had been severely punished for 
being on the wrong side of the great move- 
ments which make for human progress. Did 
this party forget nothing? Did its leadeis 
disdain to learn anything new? His object 
was to seek needed reform in the reorganiza- 
tion of this party. And it was largely 
through his energy and efforts that the Dem- 
ocrats of Wisconsin, after years of defeat, 
were led to a new victory. His practical, 
logical, and eloquent speeches during the 
campaign, especially among the Grangers, 
helped to defeat the party allied to monopoly. 
If corruption was in the Republican Party, 
the spirit of office seeking was still in the 
Democratic Party ; the latter did not want 
to be reformed, and the former would not be 
reformed. How often would the chickens of 



156 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

both parties have been gathered under the 
wings of reform, but they would not. Odious 
and unscrupulous men of both parties wage 
a war of extermination, and those who are 
left to tell the tale, combine to rob, op- 
press, and spoliate the people. In its evo- 
lution, human nature is greater than parties 
and governments. The leaven of bad men 
in parties and governments is more perni- 
cious and harmful than all other influences 
combined. The man who rules for his own 
aggrandisement is an ignominious failure. 
The machinery of government must be run 
for the people. The highest trust under 
heaven is to be the administrator of the 
affairs of a great and free people. One can 
never cease to love and admire — after the 
immortal founder of the republic — its no 
less immortal restorer. And every good 
citizen prays that God may always raise up 
such a ruler for the people. 

Governor Taylor, in 1875, " with the ad- 
vice and consent of the Senate," appointed 
Dr. O. W. Wight " chief geologist " of the 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 157 

State of Wisconsin. This position brought 
him into notice as an organizer of work, and 
as an executive officer. It also in new ways 
brought him into new relations with impor- 
tant questions of science. He extended his 
studies from man to the soil on which man 
lives. He was interested, not only in the 
history of man, but also in the history of 
man's planet. The evolution of one must 
be co-related to the evolution of the other. 
He now continued to read that mighty book, 
whose successive leaves the great Author 
imprinted and folded around the evolving 
earth, and on which were written imperish- 
ably the characters that reveal to us the steps 
of the slowly going changes to be wrought 
by the wise plans made before the founda- 
tions were laid. To read this book rightly 
is to read the secrets of the universe. To 
accept the lessons that it teaches is to believe 
in and profit by the text of modern revela- 
tion ; and so knowledge and reverence grow 
more and more side by side. 

The soil must give food and drink to man. 



158 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

It must be mantled by the mobile air. It 
must be watered by the moving clouds. It 
must be broken by the winter frosts. It must 
be ploughed by the creeping worm. It must 
be manipulated by the busy beam of the 
solar orb, and it must be cultivated by the 
active hand of man. That which is taken 
away must be given back. The fountain of 
fertility must not run dry. Careless, waste- 
ful, indifferent man, who can, if he will, 
make the desert blossom as the rose, must 
be taught to conserve the productiveness of 
his acres. He must understand the ques- 
tion of supply and demand, as it affects 
the soil on which he lives. He builds and 
plants for to-day and to-morrow as well. 
As he inherits the past, so he must give 
the present to the future. He cannot im- 
poverish his acres with impunity, for his 
wastefulness and parsimony will leave a 
crop of thorns and thistles to his children. 
He is a grand embodiment of the law of 
correlation and the conservation of energy, 
and he will be held to a strict accountability 
for his part in the evolution of the race. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 159 

One of the great problems affecting the 
destiny of man on this planet relates to the 
conservation of the fertility of the soil. The 
man who goes hungry becomes demoralized 
and degraded. Hold it as you will, the 
brain that is suffering from mal-nutrition 
is in a poor condition to rise to elevated 
thoughts of God's universe and his provi- 
dence. The heart that pulsates to the foot- 
steps of Want does not always appreciate 
the sublime doctrine of charity. The mind 
and soul which should sing together, will 
each make a different music, if the body 
which they inhabit and which dies daily, is 
not daily rebuilt, by means of those beauti- 
tiful gifts which mother earth alone can 
bestow. 

Blessed is the man who plants his corn 
and reaps his grain, with the archway of 
heaven bending over his patient head. He 
is thrice blessed : blest in the faith that the 
harvest will surely come ; blest in his daily 
toil that brings him each morning to a re- 
newal of his life : blest in his reverential 



160 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

study of the sublimest of all works. Some- 
where it has been said, that God did plan 
and shape the circling worlds ; did contrive 
the gladness of the spring; did make the 
mellow light of autumn ; did let fall the 
crystal flakes of winter ; did send forth the 
cooling, renovating winds ; did engrave the 
records upon the folded rocks ; and " for 
our advantage," did write the Holy Books : 
And all these things are meant for him who 
turns and tills the fruitful soil. 



XVII. 

Another field of labor now opens to the 
Doctor, — one which seems to be more to his 
taste, — one in which he can apply his talent 
for study and investigation, and one which 
will enable him to display his executive 
ability. He is appointed health officer of 
the city of Milwaukee. He at once laid 
hold of the great principle of preventive 
medicine. Men had been working for cen- 
turies to learn how to cure disease. Fabu- 
lous loss and expenditure, incredible toil 
and suffering, immortal heroism in the face 
of death, had made men weary, but they 
were not discouraged, though the long-looked 
for secret had not yet been discovered. The 
learned doctors were so busy in the almost 
vain endeavor to cure, that they did not take 
time to think how they might prevent dis- 



162 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

ease. And yet the same great principle 
runs through so many things : It is better to 
prevent crime than it is to imprison thieves 
and hang murderers ; it is wiser to maintain 
social order than to obliterate the footprints 
of revolution ; it is more desirable to de- 
stroy the causes of disease than to give 
names to maladies we cannot cure. The 
ship is sinking, and the men on board try to 
pump out the water, but never think of going 
into port to stop the leak. 

Hygeia is a very ancient goddess. She 
came to earth among primeval men. And 
she even kindly rules over the beasts of the 
field and forest. She is the most lovable 
and beneficent of those mystic beings which 
came to bless or harm before the dawn of 
history. The earliest historic man has taken 
refuge in her sanctuary. The old Hebrew 
raised his voice in worship at her altar. The 
sons of Buddha knelt at her shrines. The 
faithful Moslem prayed and fought under 
her protection. The sages of the iEgean 
Isles have the honor of giving her a name. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 163 

And the blessed Master approved her work, 
and gave her his benediction, — for that 
which is clean is next to godliness. 

Hygeia blesses the food we eat, and puri- 
fies the water we drink; she makes clean 
the garments we wear, and renovates the 
house in which we live ; and she helps to 
build the temple of this body into a fitting 
abode for the indwelling spirit. Happy is 
the man who entertains as a perpetual guest 
this beneficent being, — happy in his work, 
happy in his play, happy in his sleep, happy 
in his worship. To him the sun shines 
with new and newer light ; the winds blow 
more acceptably ; the seasons roll round 
more benignly ; the heart has better feel- 
ings ; the mind has nobler thoughts ; the 
soul has higher aspirations. Her wish is to 
crown every human being with ripeness of 
years and fullness of wisdom. Who would 
not labor at her commands, and be eter- 
nally obedient to her laws ? Who would 
not dwell with her dutiful children, and find 
the happiness of this life more and more ? 



164 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

One can understand the upheaval and de- 
struction caused by the earthquake ; one 
can appreciate the ruin and the desolation 
wrought by the cyclone; one can compre- 
hend the loss and the calamity of the con- 
flagration ; one can realize the horrors and 
pains of famine. But faithful women and 
brave men flee in terror before the pesti- 
lence, — they flee, because it is secret, in- 
visible, and relentless. But now, however 
dreadful it may have been in the past, pes- 
tilence can be held in check by Hygeia. 
And this goddess stands revealed as the 
personification of science, — that science 
which prevents the people from perishing. 
And it only amounts to this, that the beau- 
tiful idea of protecting and saving the peo- 
ple from* disease has been crystalized into 
the form of a gentle and benignant woman. 

One of the fathers of medicine has lik- 
ened the physician unto a blind man in the 
dark. The blind man went into a dark 
room, with a club in his hands, to encounter 
a robber who had made an attack upon his 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 165 

friend. He could not see at all, and be- 
sides it was dark ; and yet he must try to 
defend his friend against an enemy. If the 
club strikes the enemy it kills him ; if it 
falls upon his friend, it destroys him. In 
the parable, the sick man is the friend, and 
the enemy is the disease. And one fears 
that the parable at times has been true. 
For it may be that the causes of disease 
have been unknown. And so medicine is 
not yet an exact science ; curative medicine 
has not been perfected ; and preventive 
medicine is still imperfect. And then the 
good and lovable Hygeia sprang into pro- 
gressive life,. and we hope that she will be 
immortal. At the same time her practice is 
being founded on true science, and has al- 
ready risen to a high degree of perfection. 
The science and practice of preventive med- 
icine are going rapidly towards a higher 
level. One is amazed at the revelations of 
modern times. The telescope has revealed 
the wonders of the starry heavens, requiring 
volumes to describe them. And the micro- 



166 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

scope has revealed to us the mysteries of an- 
other universe at our feet. We have the 
stellar universe above us ; we have the uni- 
verse of man within ; and we have the mi- 
crobic universe below. We have a small 
being that is neither plant nor animal ex- 
clusively, — but is both in part combined. 
The microbe is like a green plant, and it is 
like an animal; it can take its nitrogen 
from ammonia compounds, and so is like a 
plant; it cannot take its carbon from car- 
bonic acid, and so is like an animal. This 
mixture of good and evil is like the Sphinx. 
It stands upon the border of the desert and 
looks two ways ; one leads into the vegeta- 
ble, and the other leads into the animal 
kingdom. 

And then the half is not told. Fire is 
beneficent, if it is kept in chains ; water is 
a good friend, if it is imprisoned ; gravic 
force is a kind protector if its law is obeyed ; 
we can send the benedictions of peace 
through the electric current, but the same 
subtile agent can rive the strongest oak. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 167 

Now this little vegito-animal, this microbe 
is a friend and a benefactor to man, — he 
lives on the dead, destroying that which is 
mischievous and harmful. He is an indis- 
pensable scavenger, cleansing the soil and 
purifying the air. The cycle of economic 
changes necessary for growth and decay 
would be impossible without this unicellular 
organism. He is not always man's friend, 
— and when he becomes an enemy, how 
baneful ! how deadly ! He is more malevo- 
lent than the plagues and woes of Egypt. 
The scavenger becomes an assassin. He 
comes in the dark ; he comes in the light of 
day ; but we cannot see him ; and we only 
know of his presence when the victim falls 
at our feet. These strange beings destroy 
the dead body of the beggar, as well as that 
of the imperial Caesar. And sometimes 
they will consume the body that is alive, — 
as if they were the avengers of sin and 
crime, — as if they delighted to feast on the 
blood of the innocent. Their abode is in 
the dirt that lies on our floors ; in the filth 



168 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

that gathers in corners ; in the slime that 
oozes from neglected places ; in garbage 
that accumulates in our kitchens ; in the 
waste that befouls the ways of our going 
and coming. The glory of the Sanitarian is 
that he can keep these little plants from 
transplantation, that he interpose a barrier 
to the immigration of these little animals, 
provided he has the legal authority and 
power. 

What did Hygeia tell the health commis- 
sioner to do ? Hygeia said : Preserve the 
health of my people, for they perish for the 
lack of knowledge. That was the spirit of 
his commission. That was the motive of 
his work. That was the watchword of his 
duty. And right loyally did he obey and 
carry out the order. Upon the door behind 
which contagion and infection were at work, 
was put the well-known mark of danger, so 
that one could pass by on the other side. 
The yellow flag of the microbe, as it rose on 
the breeze, mutely told the pathetic story of 
the deadly contest within, where none but 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 169 

the good physician and the faithful nurse 
can be of service. They may imperil life, 
— but others may pass to their peaceful pur- 
suits in safety. As a great poet sang of an 
ill-used race of men who till the soil, so we 
may sing of an ill-used race of men who 
cure the sick. But more pathetic must be 
our song of him who defends the citadel of 
public health against the attacks of dis- 
ease. 

Dr. Wight in his "Maxims of Public 
Health," wrote : " In the city of Milwau- 
kee I spent a month, as Commissioner of 
Health, in making a careful and faithful in- 
spection of the dairies from which the milk- 
supply came. The conditions of food of 
cows, cleanliness and ventilation of stables, 
drainage, water, surroundings, etc. ; whether 
the animals were healthy, turned out to pas- 
ture in summer, constantly confined in win- 
ter, etc. ; whether the proprietors were filthy, 
negligent, etc., — all the facts were written 
out separately for each dairy, tabulated, and 
indexed. The index alone made over two 

8 



170 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

hundred and fifty pages of manuscript. 
When all was completed, I invited citizens, 
through every newspaper in town, to call at 
the health office and read a detailed descrip- 
tion of the places from which they obtained 
milk for their households. Out of one hun- 
dred and twenty thousand inhabitants, the 
population at that time, just eleven came to 
see the record. Yet the apathy of Milwaukee 
citizens on this subject is not exceptional. 
Will somebody account for it in a rational 
way ? About fifty per cent, of a city's mor- 
tality is of children under five years of age. 
Among the causes of such premature mor- 
tality, bad milk, or milk poisoned with dis- 
ease germs, may be reckoned among the first. 
The poor little ones, with their pale, up- 
turned faces, with bloodless hands folded on 
their motionless breasts, with their dumb 
lips, plead to heaven in vain ; for even a 
voice from the dead cannot arouse the living 
from a fatalism more appalling than that of 
the Mohammedans. What effect would it 
have if an enlightened preacher, instead of 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 171 

talking at the funeral about a mysterious 
Providence, were to accuse the milkman, 
point blank, of murder ? The people would 
probably mob the preacher instead of the 
milkman." 

After pointing out the unsanitary condi- 
tions of the public schools of Milwaukee, he 
adds : — 

" And this is not all. The habit of dull- 
ness, begotten by the unsanitary conditions 
herein pointed out, lasts during life, and 
more or less cripples the productive energy 
of a whole generation of citizens. More- 
over, this vital question touches the pride 
and hope of almost every household. We 
must also reckon the cost of increased sick- 
ness, and a larger percentage of death. It 
seems heartless to dwell upon the economic 
side of the great and important problem. 
Above all, and beyond all, are human suffer- 
ing, constitutions broken for life, seeds of 
disease early sown, pain too deep for tears 
in the panting breast of many a little one, 
the heartache of parents, the shroud, the 



172 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

emblems of mourning, the solemn dust to 
dust and ashes to ashes closing blighted 
careers which sanitary wisdom might have 
prolonged over the customary years of use- 
fulness." 



XVIII. 

The administration of the Health Officer 
of Milwaukee soon began to benefit her 
citizens in many ways. At first people do 
not like to submit to rules of conduct which 
will make for their advantage. The per- 
sonal liberty to do harm to others is some- 
times more precious than obedience to the 
wisest laws. The personal liberty to create 
a focus of disease for self and the vicinage 
does not tend to the pursuit of happiness, 
nor is it according to the Constitution. To 
abridge such personal liberty required time. 
And to educate men in the science of their 
own well-being is not an easy task. Yet 
these things were accomplished. And the 
citizens of the lake city learned a good les- 
son, and gave evidence and testimonial to 
the wise head and firm hand that suggested 



174 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

and enforced a better sanitary administra- 
tion. At length the methods and the results 
drew the attention of intelligent men in other 
cities. So far did the influences of this 
work extend, that Dr. O. W. Wight, in 
September, 1881, received the following let- 
ter : — 

Detroit, Mich., September 6, 1881. 

O. W. Wight, Health Commissioner, 
Milwaukee, Wis. : — 

Dear Sir, — In compliance with the in- 
struction given me this afternoon by the 
Board of Health, I write to inform you of 
your unanimous choice as Health Officer of 
our city, and at the same time to urge you 
to accept the appointment and to inform us 
when you can enter upon your duties. 
Very respectfully, 

D. O. Farrand, 

Pres. Board of Health. 

The doctor accepted the appointment, and 
went to Detroit, where he found difficulties 
in different directions. It was a heavy task 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 175 

to conserve the health of a great city, when 
the people were indifferent, when there was 
opposition from medical men, when the au- 
thorities were not liberal with means and 
power. One grows weary of rolling up hill 
the " huge round stone " of obdurate in- 
difference. — Thou citizen, who dost talk 
much about thy personal liberty ; who dost 
scorn to be the slave of any man ; who dost 
boast of thy coming and going in all things 
as thou wilt ; who art one of the rulers of 
the Republic ; who hast no expectant ears 
for the pratings of the sanitarian ; who dost 
set thyself above the laws of nature and 
the blows of chance ; — thou wilt suffer, for 
the remorseless microbe will eat thee ; thy 
sense shall grow dim from the poison of the 
deadly ptomaine ; the fever of Sepsis shall 
consume thee ; and thou shalt fall into the 
forgetfulness prepared by Stupidity for all 
his angels. 

" At first the people objected to having 
their houses placarded, as a violation of 
personal liberty. A little argument con- 



176 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

vinced reasonable citizens that no man has 
the natural or acquired right to expose his 
neighbors to deadly contagious disease by- 
concealing it in his own house. Personal lib- 
erty to give small-pox to somebody else had 
better be abridged as soon as possible. Per- 
sonal liberty to send scarlet fever into a 
school with your child is rather diabolical 
than beneficent. Personal liberty to infect a 
church with a diphtheria corpse is tempting 
Providence to start an epidemic. A law 
abiding community submitted, and to-day 
the system of placarding, if it were left to 
an election, would receive a majority of 
votes in its favor. Experience proves its 
value in many ways to the citizen. He 
knows and feels that, by reason of it, his 
family is more secure against diseases that 
cost money, anxiety, and sorrow." 

And then one sees the Health Officer, as 
he goes to the hovel of a poor woman, whose 
babe lies sick with small-pox. The woman, 
with a mother's instinct, runs for an axe to 
defend her little one. She does not compre- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 177 

Lend the duty of the health officer, nor does 
she understand his legal authority, — but she 
disputes his power. Neither does she real- 
ize the peril to herself and her other chil- 
dren from the dread disease. And as for 
her neighbors, how little does she care ! She 
takes the law into her own hands. While 
she is gone for the axe, the health officer 
takes a rubber blanket from a peg in the 
wall ; he tenderly lifts the little one from 
her cradle, wraps it in the blanket, carries it 
to his carriage, and drives rapidly to the 
pest-house, which is a regal palace compared 
with the wretched hovel whence it was 
taken. Then the mother goes to him and 
on her bended knees begs the sacred privi- 
lege of nursing her afflicted babe. Yes, she 
may bestow upon it all her affection, and 
nurse it with a mother's care, in a place that 
will not bring peril to others, and where 
there is some chance of recovery. She is 
happy — God bless her. 

At one time he thought to strike the enemy 
of public health in one of its secret recesses 

8* 



178 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

— in the sewer itself. He would disinfect 
the great refuse-river that runs under the 
floor of the city, and destroy the multitudi- 
nous microbes which live there and perform 
their allotted work. Imitating a practice as 
old as Homer, he burned sulphur in the man- 
holes above the Stygian waves of the dark, 
filthy river. And when the sulphur began 
to burn, the fames found their way through 
the traps into the adjacent houses, — and 
the frightened inhabitants rushed into the 
street, declaring that the Imp of darkness 
and the day of doom had come. Two things 
were demonstrated : one, that the traps did 
not seal the sewer tight ; the other, that dis- 
infecting the sewer lowered the death rate. 

" In nine out of ten, probably in ninety- 
nine out of a hundred, houses in this city 
connected with the public sewers, the gas is 
a perpetual guest. Like the traditional 
ghost, it comes through closed doors. It 
does not go when it is ready, but comes to 
stay. Nothing but the subtile cunning of 
science can bar its ingress. It is worse than 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 179 

the skeleton that is said to be in every man's 
closet. It is more unwholesome than a rot- 
ten corpse. The cadaver might be enclosed 
in a single room. The poisonous gas is 
everywhere. The effluvium of the corpse 
does not lie in ambush. The gas comes 
from the organic decay of the whole neigh- 
borhood. To-day it brings with it the con- 
tagion of typhoid; to-morrow it introduces 
diphtheria ; next day it smuggles in scarlet 
fever. It gives no warning, and its unknown 
presence is not shunned. It sleeps with 
you, creeps into every cell of your lungs, 
and lays shadowy fingers on every drop of 
your heart's blood." 

The exordium and the peroration of a ser- 
mon by the health officer on How to make 
a place unhealthy, are of interest : " Most 
people have heard the story of the good old 
prosy minister who, as soon as the deacons 
began to snore and the whole congregation 
began to nod, gave a sudden and shrill blast 
on a dog whistle. Everybody was wide 
awake in a moment. ■ When I preach the 



180 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

gospel,' the minister pathetically said, ' you 
go to sleep ; but as soon as I begin to raise 
the devil, you are all attentive enough.' 

" If I had prepared a paper on How to 
Make a Place Healthy, you would have 
regarded the subject as safely orthodox, and 
probably would have shown confidence in 
the sanitary preacher by listening in a pas- 
sive manner. When I propose to raise the 
deuce, by discoursing on the theme, How to 
Make a Place Unhealthy, you will probably 
be on the alert to detect sanitary heresy." 

An interesting discourse follows, closing 
with memorable and touching words : 
" Many an unfortunate man weaves about 
himself and his household, through his own 
sanitary ignorance, not unfrequently with 
the concurrence of another's sanitary crime, 
a fate more terrible than that told by Ugo- 
lino to Dante in the i Inferno.' Surrender- 
ing to the warlike Archbishop of Pisa, Ugo- 
lino was imprisoned, with his two sons and 
his two grandsons, in a tower which long 
bore the name of Torre della Fame, the 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 181 

Tower of Famine. One morning after, 
they heard the lower door of the tower 
locked. The key was thrown into the adja- 
cent river, and the prisoners were deliv- 
ered into the hands of Hunger as their 
executioner. As the historian Napier says, 
4 Their tragic fate still sounds in awful num- 
bers from the lyre of Dante, after more 
than five hundred years.' 

" I will let the unhappy Shade of Ugolino 
tell the tale, in thirty lines of poetry, which 
says Landor, are unequaled by any other 
thirty in the whole dominion of poetry." 

" And I heard locking up the under door 
Of the horrible Tower ; whereat without a word 
I gazed into the face of my sons. 
I wept not, I within so turned to stone : 
They wept : and darling little Anselmn mine 
Said : Thou dost gaze so, father, what ails thee ? 
Still not a tear I shed, nor answer made 
All that day, nor yet the night thereafter, 
Until another sun rose on the world, 
As now a little glimmer made its way 
Into the dolorous prison, and I saw 
Upon four faces my own very aspect, 



182 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

Both of my hands in agony I bit : 

And thinking I did it from desire 

Of eating, on a sudden they uprose, 

And said they : Father, much less pain H will give us 

If thou dost eat of us : thyself did clothe us 

With this poor flesh, and do thou strip it off. 

I calmed me then, not to make them more sad. 

That day they were silent, and the next. 

Ah ! obdurate earth, wherefore didst thou not 

open ? 
When we had come unto the fourth day, Gaddo , 
Threw himself down outstretched before my feet 
Saying : My father, why dost thou not help me ? 
And there he died ; and, as thou dost see me, 
I saw the three fall one by one, between 
The fifth day and the sixth ; when I betook me, 
Already blind, to groping over each, 
And three days called them after they — were 

dead ; 
Then hunger did what sorrow could not do." 

" I have no disposition to pronounce a 
malediction upon my fellow-men ; but, within 
my own knowledge, more than one poor 
household has perished as pitiably, not with 
hunger, but with fever, for which a hard, in- 
different, avaricious landlord, who could not 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W, WIGHT. 183 

be made to answer at the bar of sanitary 
justice, shall answer in the great hereafter. 
What the finger of retribution has written 
on the forehead of the offender cannot be 
erased by the blasphemous and essentially 
mendacious cry, Am I my brother's keeper f 
And he who, by his sanitary stupidity and 
obduracy, drags down to untimely sepulture 
with himself his wife and his little ones, 
shall not be allowed to plead ignorance of 
Nature's inexorable law before a judge who 
endowed him with powers of knowing, under- 
standing, and obeying." 



XIX. 

Dr. Wight had read and studied books 
on law, from time to time. He was in- 
terested in the principles of law, and in 
their application to the government of so- 
ciety. His knowledge in this respect was 
like that in the domain of general literature. 
He was familiar with the generalizations of 
the subject of Law. And so it was not a 
difficult task to complete his legal studies. 
This he did during the first years of his resi- 
dence in Milwaukee. And on the twenty- 
ninth day of March, 1873, he was admitted 
to practice as an attorney and counsellor at 
law, and solicitor in all Courts of Record in 
the First Judicial Circuit of Wisconsin. 
On the eighth day of April, 1873, he was 
duly admitted to practice as an attorney and 
counsellor at law and solicitor in chancery 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 185 

in the Supreme Court of the State of Wis- 
consin. And on the fourteenth day of April, 
1873, he was duly admitted an attorney and 
counsellor of the Circuit and District Courts 
of the United States for the Eastern District 
of Wisconsin. After Dr. Wight went to 
Detroit to assume charge of the Health 
Office of that city, he was admitted to prac- 
tice law in the various courts of the State of 
Michigan, as well as the Supreme Court of 
the United States, as attested by the follow- 
ing Records : On the twenty-first day of 
September, 1882, he was admitted and 
licensed to practice as an attorney and 
counsellor at law, and solicitor and coun- 
sellor in chancery, in the several courts of 
the State of Michigan. On the sixteenth 
day of November, 1885, he was admitted to 
practice as an attorney and counsellor at law 
and solicitor in chancery, in the Circuit 
Court of the United States, for the Sixth 
Circuit and Eastern District of Michigan. 
And on the ninth day of December, 1885, 
he was duly admitted and qualified as an 



186 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

attorney and counsellor of the Supreme 
Court of the United States. 

As opportunity offered, Dr. Wight en- 
tered, to some extent, into the practice of 
the profession of law. A case in which he 
took great interest was one which he related 
to a circle of friends at his brother's house 
in Brooklyn. The following are the leading 
facts of the case : A poor woman had been 
indicted for the crime of infanticide. The 
evidence in the hands of the public prose- 
cutor seemed to be very strong. Public 
feeling against the defendant ran high. She 
was without friends and without money, 
and her case appeared well-nigh hopeless. 
The doctor undertook her defense. He 
brought forward convincing evidence that 
the defendant could not have caused the 
death of her infant. The medical testimony, 
as well as the testimon}^ as to facts, made a 
deep impression on the jury. In his ad- 
dress to the jury, he first gave a simple and 
clear statement of the unanswerable evi- 
dence proving the innocence of his client ; 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 187 

and then he added that his client was a 
devout Catholic, and that her religious con- 
victions were wholly inconsistent with so 
dreadful a crime, and that there could not 
be the shadow of a motive for committing 
it. A speedy verdict in her favor was ren- 
dered, and the poor woman was set free. 
She repaid her benefactor with tears, thanks 
and blessings, for she had nothing else to 
give. 

The following is taken from his defense 
of certain persons who had pleaded guilty of 
conspiracy to defraud the government : — 

" Finally, the enlightened administration 
of justice has in view not simply the inflic- 
tion of punisment for crimes committed, but 
also, and foremost, the reformation and pres- 
ervation of the citizen. Those who have 
pleaded guilty before this court to the 
charge of conspiracy to defraud the govern- 
ment are not in need of severe punishment 
to remind them of their obligation to obey 
the laws. Their affection for the govern- 
ment will not be increased by long incarcer- 



188 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

ation. Having suffered severely already, 
in body and estate, clemency will impress 
more profoundly than severity. A great 
government that could afford to pardon the 
leaders of a mighty conspiracy which cost 
the nation half a million of lives and several 
billions of treasure, can surely be contented 
with inflicting a minimum of punishment on 
citizens misled by its own agents into a con- 
spiracy to defraud the government. These 
men have repented, and have brought forth 
fruits meet for repentance by aiding the 
government with their testimony. To strike 
them when they are down, when they have 
ceased to contend, with more severity than 
is absolutely necessary, would be a viola- 
tion of the public sense of justice, the in- 
evitable tendency of which would be to 
weaken, not to strengthen respect for the 
law. At such a juncture, mercy is wisdom, 
and severity is tyranny. Mercy in these 
cases is literally twice blessed, blessing the 
government that gives, and the prisoner that 
receives ; it is — 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 189 

' like the Hours 
That sit open-handed on the clouds, 
And press the liberality of heaven 
Down to the laps of thankful men.' " 

As he understood them, the principles 
guiding the practice of law may be, in part, 
expressed as follows : We often hear of the 
license of counsel in the treatment of wit- 
nesses. In fact, the witness often complains 
of the difficulties encountered in giving tes- 
timony ; and he especially dreads the cross- 
examiner. Now, what is the duty of coun 
sel? He speaks for his client, since his 
client cannot speak for himself. It is his 
duty to defend the rights and interest of an- 
other for whom he speaks and acts. This is 
also his business. He must ward off an at- 
tack ; he must repel an invasion ; he must 
protect his client from the threats and men- 
aces of an adversary. He must use his best 
skill and exert all his powers to prevent his 
client from suffering an injustice, from 
being wronged. He must leave nothing un- 
done to prove his innocence, to gain his ac- 



190 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

quittal, to promote his interests, to maintain 
his rights. In matters that are relevant to 
the issue he may search the depths of the 
heart, he may probe the profoundest feel- 
ings, and he may traverse the ways of the 
most devious intellect. He is like the skill- 
ful surgeon, who causes pain that life may 
continue. 

The law entrusts the advocate with ex- 
tensive powers and with great liberty of 
speech, such as in every-day life would not 
be tolerated. In what he may conscien- 
tiously do to defend his client he is, as it 
were, only limited by his own sense of duty ; 
and if he has a high sense of duty, in his 
own field of work he is supreme. In his 
search for truth he must not be reckless, 
nor rash, nor unreasonable. If he goes be- 
yond the law and if he violates the rules of 
evidence, he may be admonished, repri- 
manded, or punished by the court. He is 
not at liberty to seek after truth by means 
that are illegal and wrong. He must pur- 
sue his work by methods that are legal and 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 191 

right. We all respect the magnanimous and 
upright advocate ; he is an honor to his pro- 
fession ; he is a terror to those who do evil ; 
he is a hope for those who are assailed and 
wronged ; he is a public benefactor and an 
ornament to society. 

Too frequently the advocate has to deal 
with a witness who is a partisan, who is hos- 
tile, who is prejudiced, who is offensive, who 
is unscientific. He may be excused for 
treating such a witness with rigorous sever- 
ity ; he may bring to bear on him his most 
powerful weapons ; he may drive him against 
the wall of truth ; he may dissect every fibre 
of his motives ; he may impale him on the 
sword of the cross-examiner ; he may ex- 
pose his prejudices, his pretensions, and his 
presumptions. And yet, as a high authority 
has said, an advocate is a warrior, and not 
an assassin. 

Dr. Wight appears to have had three 
leading objects in the study and practice of 
law : one, the acquisition of knowledge ; one 
the relations of law to history ; one, the em- 



192 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

bodinient of law in the Constitution. He 
took satisfaction in conquering every de- 
partment of human knowledge. Simply, 
it was his ambition to know whatever was 
knowable. Beyond that he traced the prin- 
ciples of law into the evolution of history. 
What, indeed, would Grecian history be 
without the laws of Greece? One of the 
historical monuments of this ancient and 
classic land bears the inscription : Go tell 
the one who passes by that here obedient to 
our country's laws we lie. And we may 
stop for a brief moment to contemplate the 
pathetic dust that was once ensouled with 
the breath and life of immortal heroes. One 
can never forget the grand and pathetic 
justice of Socrates, as he tells his friend 
Crito, if he tries to destroy the laws of his 
country, that the laws in Hades will be 
angry, and will not receive him kindly on 
his arrival, — and so he drinks the poison. 
What would the history of Rome be without 
Roman law ? And after the fall of old 
Rome, has not her law, in one form or an- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 193 

other, lived on in the jurisprudence of more 
modern nations, giving life, stability, and 
perpetuity ? And we too, in the newness of 
our national life, trace the roots of our own 
laws back to the same great source. Laws 
are rules of action. Actions are civil deeds. 
And criminal deeds are offenses against the 
laws. But deeds, civil and criminal, of in- 
dividuals and states make up the events 
recorded in history. 

Dr. Wight had " read an average of 
one hundred pages of history daily during 
more than twenty years of a laborious life. 
. . . How much more fruitful the reading 
might have been if it had been guided from 
the beginning by the experience accumulated 
at the end ! " He had gone over the field of 
the world's history, and was digesting and 
shaping the material in his mind. The 
plans of work were being arranged. It was 
a continuation of the same purpose of bring- 
ing before the people a better kind of read- 
ing that he began years previous, in editing 
the volumes of the " Home Library," which 



194 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

contained the lives of the great men of his- 
tory. He says : " A considerable number 
among the millions of intelligent people in 
this country have a desire to know some- 
thing of the world's marvelous story, and 
would willingly set themselves the task of 
reading, at odd hours, a reasonable number 
of books of history if some experienced 
friend could be found to designate the par- 
ticular works best adapted to the end in 
view, and to indicate the proper sequence in 
which to pursue them. . . . Any systematic 
study, or even reading of history, may well 
begin with that of Greece. The Hellenes 
occupied both shores and the islands of the 
iEgean Sea. Their enchanting land faced 
the east on the one side, and the west on 
the other. They were midway between Asia 
and Europe. Greek history touches the re- 
motest antiquity, and reaches down to the 
present time. Except the Christian religion 
Greek culture is the most important factor 
in European civilization. The Aryan race 
made its earliest and most important achieve- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 195 

ments in Hellas. The history of the Greeks 
is not only profoundly instructive and inter- 
esting in itself, it is also the key to all other 
histories of civilized men." 

The study and practice of law enabled 
Dr. Wight to prepare a valuable work on 
the Constitution. The work is indexed by 
the leading words and topics of the Consti- 
tution, and is adapted as a book of refer- 
ence. The opinions of the distinguished 
jurists, and the decisions of the courts as to 
the construction of the Constitution and its 
amendments, are so arranged as to make 
them available to the student of constitu- 
tional law, as well as to lawyers who may 
come to try cases in the future, under the 
application of the supreme law of the land. 
It is the design of the author to have this 
work published, as soon as time permits and 
opportunity offers. 

In brief, Dr. Wight was an educated 
physician, an able lawyer, and a skilled en- 
gineer ; and he brought to bear his three- 
fold knowledge upon the application of san- 



196 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

itary science to the preservation of the public 
health. His zeal was commensurate with 
his acquirements. His ambition was to ben- 
efit the public by giving advice on hy- 
giene, when that advice had been fortified 
by law, and based on sound views of engi- 
neering. In this way he was more than 
equivalent to a sanitary board composed of 
a physician, a lawyer, and an engineer. 



XX. 

In the mean time the President of the 
Board of Health, Dr. D. O. Farrand, had 
been taken away in the prime of life. The 
Health Officer felt that he had lost a true 
friend. And when this loved and lovable 
man was laid at rest, he paid him a heart- 
felt tribute. All hearts were touched by 
his simple, plain words, earnest in the ex- 
treme, and full of hope, rising from the 
transitory, until the unseen and the eternal 
appeared to open for him who had put off 
all that was mortal. Another noble and 
blameless life had been given up in the ser- 
vice of " all sorts and conditions of men." 
And everybody mourned his departure. 
The bereavement was hard to bear. We 
ask, Why are the good and useful taken, 
and the bad and useless left ? Then we 
say, We know not why. 



198 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

As time went on, there arose an " irrecon- 
cilable difference of opinion as to methods 
and aims " between the Health Officer and 
the Board of Health. The Health Officer 
had " toiled hard " for years, " reduced the 
death rate, and abated nuisances by the 
thousand." He said : "It is not my fault 
that I quit the service, yet I am glad to 
lay down a heavy burden." He sent his 
resignation to the mayor. This step caused 
much regret in municipal circles. And 
when asked to reconsider his action, he re- 
plied : "I came to the conclusion deliber- 
ately and I will resign. Such expressions as 

Dr. 's greatly reduce the effect of the 

work of the health department and create 
insubordination on the part of the public." 
Finally, with honor, with integrity, with 
respect, he left the Health Office, and went 
forth a " free man," with only one regret, — 
that any one could be found to stand be- 
tween his efforts and the good of the public. 
Yet such things have been from the begin- 
ning, and we fear will be to the end. They 



j 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 199 

who will not see are of necessity blind ; 
there are none so deaf as they who close 
their ears; they are the most stupid who 
will not learn ; and there are none so use- 
less as they who oppose the public good. 
In this, as in all human affairs, we find men 
who tend to reversion of type in the domain 
of enlightenment and progress. This is a 
veritable disorder which seems to be hope- 
less and without remedy. 

But the doctor had laid down the burden 
of his office, — and was again looking for- 
ward : this had been one of the maxims of 
his life. To be and act in the living pres- 
ent were the stepping-stones to the higher 
good of the future, in which every man 
should have faith. The unalterable and van-- 
ished past is among the records of things 
done, right or wrong. The present is the 
only thing that lives. The future is being 
born eternally into newness of life. So he 
was looking forward. 

In the spring of 1886 a brief letter came 
from Detroit, announcing that he had re- 



200 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

signed his position as Health Officer, had 
sold out everything, and had made prepara- 
tion for a journey to the East and around the 
world, in order to see and study the Aryan 
peoples in their homes, and so fulfill a long- 
eherished desire. He had already engaged 
his passage across the ocean on the " Trave." 
He could no longer endure the heavy burden 
of toil and responsibility in the Health Office. 
He was worn and weary, and if he did not 
get relief he would die. He thought the best 
way to rest and recuperate was to travel. 
He had no ties to bind him, for he was 
virtually alone. He would be at my house 
at a certain time, and tarry a few weeks be- 
fore embarking. 

When he came, it could be seen that the 
fingers of time had been busy. Change 
comes to all things done by man, and to 
man himself. Memory ran back through 
the vista of years, and touched on all it 
could, and left all it could not bring. 
The heroic struggle for a place and name 
seemed brief enough, and yet it could not 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 201 

last. Thus to live and work was different, 
so diverse, compared with one who digs 
contentedly in the solemn dust. There was 
a momentary retrospect, but no vain re- 
gret, only a looking forward from the van- 
tage-ground already conquered. A thought 
of nothing lost, but of something missed, 
in the brief cycle of the past. 

" We are the voices of the wandering wind, 
Which moan for rest, and rest can never find ; 
Lo ! as the wind is, so is mortal life, 
A moan, a sigh, a sob, a storm, a strife." 

Then in story he again wandered over the 
famous Lake District of England ; after 
that went down to the shores of sunny Italy ; 
once more journeyed amid the scenes on the 
banks of the Rhine ; — in nature he found 
much interfused, and more in man : and be- 
hind all was a memory that would not fall 
into forgetfulness. And so one knew that 
more than time had been at work : that am- 
bition and toil had done their part and that 
Destiny had done all they could not do. 
It was his purpose to go over into Central 

9* 



202 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

Asia. He desired to see and study the 
strange people of that strange land. It was 
thence that migrations had taken place. It 
was in the East that we find the cradle of 
the human race. To this day they have not 
greatly advanced in civilization. To travel 
over their rugged hills and through their 
dense forests would involve fatigue and 
hardship that could only be borne by one 
in robust health. These peoples appear 
never to have ceased to war with each other, 
and this would augment the danger of travel 
through their inhospitable country. It was 
difficult to persuade him from braving the 
perils of the wild tribes of men who live 
mostly without law and order in this land 
where man has appeared to live always. 
But he did not fully give up his design of 
visiting this cradle-land until he had gone 
over toward the East far enough to find 
that journeying further was impracticable 
and impossible. 

The day of going came, when the " Trave " 
was to sail out on the trackless deep, as they 






MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 203 

say, over the lost Atlantis, having all her 
cultivated fields, her noble cities, and her 
monuments, submerged for long ages, wait- 
ing for upheaval in the time to come. The 
day was sunny. A light haze veiled the 
sky> as if to limit the vision into the future. 
The elements were silent. The storms were 
dumb. There were no winds to " wrestle 
and to rave." The majestic Hudson as of 
old was contending with the heaving tides 
of the ocean. There was hurrying to and 
fro of busy feet. The hum of industry 
and commerce arose from the metropolis of 
the West. Man was ceaselessly setting 
foot upon the ever-vanishing present be- 
tween two eternities, — one gone, the other 
to come. Why should the highest of God's 
creatures appear to " walk with aimless 
feet?" We know not now, — but then we 
shall know even as we are known. And 
on that day we parted, not as we had parted 
before, but with an expectancy less sure. 
For the morn of life had gone, and the sun 
was drawing toward the west. And rest 



204 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

comes sooner then. One knows not when 
or where those he loves will fall into silence. 
Yet there need be no fear. For the great 
Father, in his universal and unalterable 
Providence, does nothing but good to 
his children. In many ways our lives and 
fortunes had been linked together. Across 
the tide both ways more than once was 
held a helping hand. So the future would 
make for pain and grief, not to him who 
first met his fate, but to him who was left 
at his post of duty. Sometimes we all have 
prophetic visions of the future. Science is 
only a form of seeing, — but seeing is wider 
than all science. There seemed to be a 
light that shone into the future farther 
than the eye could see. The years that had 
vanished seemed to be of so little worth. 
The boundless and deathless future opened 
up another expansion. On these two shores, 
the one here and the other hereafter, we 
said the word — Farewell. 



XXI. 

It would be impossible to condense the 
narrative of this long journey. Its purpose 
can only be indicated by extracts from its 
preface, as well as by some remarks and re- 
flections. The book in which it is found is 
commended to the reader. The author 
says : — 

" Last year I made a long, winding jour- 
ney around the globe, in order to observe 
every country in which an Aryan people 
has established civil government. One 
looks in vain elsewhere for progress and lib- 
erty. The Aryan nations of antiquity 
Greece and Rome, must be studied in his 
tory, for the Greek and Roman peoples 
have passed away and can no longer be 
studied in their daily life. Yet the lands 
occupied by the vanished races may still be 



206 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

visited by the traveler, who can at least be- 
come familiar with the scenes in the midst 
of which they dwelt. The study of Aryan 
peoples, whether living or departed, can 
alone reveal to us the origin and develop- 
ment of the world's civilization. 

" History is comparatively barren without 
a knowledge of geography. Maps may aid 
us much, especially when studied with the 
help of some experience and a vivid imagi- 
nation; but traveling alone can give us 
true geographical knowledge. Current his- 
tory becomes real to us, is translated into 
personal experience, only when by traveling 
we observe at once people and country in 
their intimate relations. In pursuit of such 
vital knowledge, I traversed Europe from 
north to south, from east to west, and 
journeyed far off to Australia and New Zea- 
land, on the other side of the globe, where 
fresh Aryan communities are planting civil 
liberty in the southern hemisphere. 

" Art, science, literature are, with a very 
few notable exceptions, the products of Aryan 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 207 

civilization, and can be studied only in 
countries occupied by Aryan peoples. 
Above all, in such countries alone do we 
find recognition of human rights and the 
establishment of institutions for the benefit 
of the many. There is doubtless room for 
progress in the most enlightened nations, 
for civilization has not yet borne all its 
fruits. . . . 

" The leading purpose of the book, how- 
ever, is political and social. I have aimed 
to draw faithful portraits of the leading 
civilized nations of the world as they exist 
to-day. Of course, the features of the great 
peoples of the earth can be drawn only in 
outline on the small pieces of canvas that 
constitute the brief chapters of a single 
volume. Yet generalizations, if true to fact, 
if they are the results of accurate observation, 
if, above all, they embody the real laws that 
govern the development of humanity in 
time and space, are the best aids to a fruit- 
ful study of detailed history. 

" The reader may or may not accept my 



208 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

philosophical definition of a nation, yet it 
will certainly reveal to him that underlying 
every independent national existence is a 
problem wider, deeper, than form of govern- 
ment, territorial possession, succession of 
events, or transition of passing generations 
of men. Whether my particular theory is 
accepted or not, my object will be gained if 
I succeed in convincing the reader that the 
Providence of history has a rational basis. 
Travel among the peoples of the world may 
well have a higher aim than personal amuse- 
ment or material pleasure. 

" ' What sliapest thou here at the world ? ' 
' 'T was shapen long ago ; 
The Maker shaped it, 
And thought 't were best even so.' " 

To indicate the guiding principle in 
studying and giving " an account of the rise, 
progress, achievements, decline, and fall of 
nations, " a description of his idea of a na- 
tion may be noted : " It is quite evident that 
a nation is not merely a territory ; is not 
simply a portion of the earth's surface. The 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 209 

place occupied by a nation, a people, is no 
more a nation, a people, than the house a 
man lives in is a man. 

" O Earth, what changes thou hast seen ! 
There where the long street roars hath been ' 
The stillness of the Central Sea. 

"Yet nations have seen more changes 
than the earth. Many a kingdom has 
passed away, while surrounding sea and land 
remain substantially the same. The same 
clouds gather on the brow of Olympus, the 
same sun shines on the plains of Thessaly, 
the same glorious atmospheric haze rests on 
the hills of Attica, the same tempest lashes 
the iEgean Sea, the same stars keep nightly 
vigils over Delphi, the same winds sweep 
over Salamis and Platanea, as of old, but the 
real Hellas is no longer there. The mariner 
on the Mediterranean now, as in the days 
of JEneas, gazes upon Italy ' lying low ; ' 
yet that wonderful land has been the habi- 
tation of successive nations, successive peo- 
ples, that exist no more. The Israelites 
were a nation in their bondage, in their 



210 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

wanderings, in the Babylonish captivity, as 
well as when they possessed the land ' round 
about Jordan.' They are a people still, al- 
though dispersed over the whole globe. The 
portion of the North American continent 
now occupied by our nation has existed 
from the formation of the sea and the dry 
land ; yet its fertile soil, its lakes, its rivers, 
its mountains, its long lines of coast, failed 
to produce a people, till causes above the 
earth planted here a great republic. 

"Neither is a nation a form of govern- 
ment. Not only rulers and dynasties change, 
but governments change in their most essen- 
tial forms, while nations live on. Rome was 
at first a monarchy, then a republic, then an 
empire, but the nation continued. The Is- 
raelites remained the same people, while 
governed by patriarchs, by law-givers, by 
judges, by kings, by foreign rulers. France, 
within a comparatively recent period, has 
been a monarchy, a republic, a kingdom, 
again a republic, an empire, and once more 
a republic ; yet the French people, the 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 211 

French nation, has preserved its distinctive 
characteristics, whether governed by Louis 
XIV., by a National Assembly, by a mili- 
tary chieftain, by a Bourbon king, by Napo- 
leon III., or by M. Carnot. Even England 
was once a republic, without change in the 
strong individuality of the British people. 
The Italian nation remained distinct while 
ruled in sections by different dynasties, or 
cut up into many turbulent republics. It 
has retained the peculiar features of its in- 
dividual life — a people different from all 
others — during repeated conquests, during 
the tumultuous changes of a thousand years. 
Greece remained the same nation, the same 
wonderful people, during as many mutations 
in government as the wit of man could in- 
vent. The government of the United States 
was once a loose confederation, then a con- 
stitutional union ; yet we remained the same 
American people, the same nation, differing 
essentially from all other peoples, all other 
nations. A nation, therefore, is not a mere 
form of government. 



212 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

" Again, a nation, a people, is not a mere 
collection of human beings, is not an aggrega- 
tion, thus to speak, of individuals, any more 
than the world is ' a fortuitous concourse 
of atoms.' No subject of Augustus Caesar 
was ruled by Antoninus Pius, yet they were 
both emperors of the same Koman people. 
No Frenchman living in the time of Des- 
cartes is living to-day, yet who believes that 
France has ceased to live ? The English- 
men of the nineteenth century are standing 
on the graves of the Englishmen governed 
by the Tudor s, yet who doubts that England 
still exists. Who questions that Homer and 
Pindar, though separated by many vanished 
generations, sang to the same Hellenic peo- 
ple? We speak of Moses and David as 
heads of the same nation of Israelites, though 
widely divided by the shadow-land of perish- 
ing mortality. A dark stream of time sepa- 
rates Castellar and the Duke of Alva, yet 
the stream is bridged by the Spanish na- 
tional life. Not a soul of us will be here in 
a hundred years, yet, I trust, the American 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 213 

people will be here. Generations come and 
go like the shadows of summer clouds, but 
the nations live on, obedient to laws that 
have a wider sweep than the laws that gov- 
ern individual life. 

"If, then, a nation, a people, is not essen- 
tially a territory, a form of government, or 
a fortuitous concourse of individuals, what 
is it ? The house a man lives in, the clothes 
he wears, and his material body, are not the 
real man. His continuous life, that which 
gives him through all external changes a 
consciousness of his identity, is his soul, his 
spirit, his intellectual and moral being. Just 
so it is with a nation. A people, a nation, 
has an inner life, an organic existence, that 
preserves its identity, through all changes of 
territory, of government, of passing genera- 
tions. It is an idea, a great generalizing 
principle, a predominant thought, an organ- 
izing sentiment, a vital force, a mode of 
evolution, call it what you will, that consti- 
tutes the soul, the essence of a nation. This 
principle, this dominant idea, gathers men 



214 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

around it, animates them with a common 
national life, educates them, gradually forms 
their speech, directs their efforts in a certain 
course, coordinates their energies, produces 
through them peculiar laws, shapes literature 
and art, builds political and civil institutions, 
determines forms of religion, moulds social 
life, creates manners. Loyalty to this cen- 
tral sentiment, this reigning idea, constitutes 
the soul of patriotism ; disloyalty to it begets 
rebellion. When this sentiment, this idea, 
perishes from the minds of men, the nation 
animated by it, ensouled by it, inevitably 
perishes and passes away." 

This idea, this thought, this principle, that 
runs ever in the current of national life, that 
binds individuals together, that shapes pub- 
lic policy, that makes a people a larger 
family, that gives all a common purpose and 
interest, that overshadows minor differences, 
that animates in the pursuits of peace, that 
leads to defense in war, that works in the 
administration of affairs, — this idea, this 
soul, of a nation, was the key of inter preta- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 215 

tion, used in reading history, in studying the 
enlightenment, evolution, and progress of the 
Aryan peoples, in traveling through the 
countries of Europe and elsewhere, from 
west to east, from south to north, from the 
North Cape to the ^Egean Isles, from the 
Isles of the Central Sea to far-off Australia. 

On our way, we will tarry briefly at the 
North Cape to look at the midnight sun. 

On the coast of Norway is a labyrinth of 
islets and islands, intersected by waterways 
so numerous that they bewilder the traveler. 
The islets, made mostly of stone, lie in zones 
and clusters between the tranquil inner 
straits and waterways and the stormy At- 
lantic. Water and land are everywhere inter- 
mingled in the most inextricable confusion. 
The hardy fisher-folks have built their nests, 
like sea-birds, on ledges of rocks, and their 
frail skiffs lie anchored upon the smooth 
waters below. Some of the islands are of 
such size and elevation that they remain in 
sight all day, frowning in the clear sky, as 
the little steamer winds its devious way to- 



216 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

wards the land of the midnight sun. For a 
thousand miles smaller islands form a break- 
water to the silent waterways, in which men 
and boys fish in their fragile boats, and 
where the women and girls row to church or 
to market. And on a large inner channel, 
next the mainland, the commerce of Norway 
is carried on in safety. 

On the voyage to the North Cape, you 
seem to be always environed by land ; a solid 
wall rises in front of you ; behind you there 
is never an opening ; here the shaggy cliffs 
are hung with waterfalls ; yonder is a snow- 
capped peak ; there the sea - bed is visible 
under the keel; at one time silence reigns 
supreme ; at another the roar of cascades 
breaks upon the ear; anon a silver cloud 
drops its shadow upon the scene ; you turn 
to the right because there is no gateway on 
the left; and then you turn to the left to 
avoid the sullen rocks on the right ; but you 
move ever onward toward tho wonder-land 
of the north. You are in the midst of the 
enchanted land which is the home of the 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 217 

Norseman, who builds his house in green 
corners, who constructs his roadways along 
narrow dells, who cuts fodder for his beasts 
on mountain ledges, who makes the gleeful 
streams grind his corn, who can " cling and 
live " wherever the feathery pine and silver 
birch can find foothold and growth. 

'T is here that he who loves the sea may 
always look upon the land ; 't is here that he 
who loves the land may always look upon 
the sea, and 't is here where land and sea 
forever meet, and where the sky bends o'er 
fair scenes, and its clouds are mirrored with 
the waterfalls and rocks in the silent depths 
below, and where Nature's ceaseless motions 
agitate the cooling air all the summer long, 
to satisfy and soothe the heart of mortal 
man. 

One voyages toward the North Cape, go- 
ing out into a wide expanse of water, as the 
afternoon glides on, and waits for the mid- 
night sun. Night approaches, but darkness 
does not come. The sun curves toward the 
horizon, but does not deign to touch it. Now 
10 



218 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

it " hides behind a bank of violet cloud, and 
the opal fringe emits a dazzling effulgence." 
At some distance the sky is cloudless, and 
seems to open to an immeasurable depth. 
Every color and every cloud-shape above is 
reproduced in the bosom of the sea. The 
mystic beauties of the Arctic heavens shine 
forth during a night in which no trace of 
night appears. The tourist speaks not : 
there is a hush of delighted silence, and all 
eyes are drinking in the strange scene of a 
night beautified by the unveiled majesty of 
the great orb of day. " A midnight where- 
in the sea is as ethereal as the air, and, like 
the air, streaming with strange splendors, a 
midnight in which the very Viking ships as 
they silently steal athwart a glittering path- 
way of sunlight seem like spectre ships glid- 
ing in a radiance at once beautiful and weird, 
is never to be forgotten ; it lives as a revela- 
tion, an exchange of the material for the 
spiritual, a glimpse within the golden gates : 
4 And I beheld a new heaven and a new 
earth.' " 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W- WIGHT. 219 

When the great earth swings southward, 
to lift the sun on high, and the Norse-land 
emerges from the long winter night, and the 
cheerful day begins and lengthens, as the 
season turns her footsteps toward the frozen 
zone, the orb of day rises, nor sets, but gilds 
both day and night, and rolls above the sea 
and land even at the midnight hour, or what 
in other lands would be the midnight hour, 
and so is called the midnight sun, which 
shines uutil its brief race is run, and leaves 
the North Cape in darkness. 

" Early Monday morning we started back, 
southward. Lyngenfiord soon hove in sight, 
on the west shore of which is a long line 
of snow-capped mountains, five or six thou- 
sand feet high. They were distant, yet in 
the clear atmosphere looked so near. The 
captain of the steamer promised us a cotil- 
lion of whales, and a coronation of a moun- 
tain by the sun at midnight. The proper 
place was reached a little past ten o'clock in 
the evening. Great whales soon began their 
gambols, according to programme. In the 



220 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

distance was a mountain, with lofty dome, 
which the sun was nearing behind a curtain 
of illuminated clouds. The ship was so placed 
that the coronation would take place, weather 
permitting, from eleven o'clock to near twelve, 
when the sun would emerge, full-orbed, into 
an open space, at midnight. The elements 
were propitious and the exhibition was un- 
speakably grand." The sun is invisible: in 
the sky there is a circle of glory, and in the 
midst is the kingly head of the dusky colos- 
sus. Now the thin clouds, like aerial tapestry 
held by unseen fingers above the monarch, 
begin to burn along their lower edges. " One 
might think they had caught fire from the 
earth below, had not this new splendor been 
pure as that of the diamond. Now the halo 
around the mountain's stately brow expands, 
and the hanging tapestry of clouds pulses 
and flashes as its flaming fringe consumes 
the texture of purplish gray. See how the 
cloud flickers and breaks up into glowing 
shreds, which float aloft in upward streaming 
films of dazzling fire ! Below us is the sea, 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 221 

around us are the Silences ; the sea an ex- 
panse of damascened steel, the air still as 
with a holy hush ; and before us, high up in 
the heavens is the mountain's lofty dome, 
limned in lines of glistening light and dia- 
demed with living lustre. The sun now 
glides out, and just above the shoulders of 
the Giant, it hangs in the beautiful scene 
its perfect disk of glossy gold. Our tourists 
look at each other with thoughtful eyes, but 
speak not. The hush that is on all things 
is in their spirits. The silent rapture of the 
scene steals upon them, and theirs is the 
Sabbath of the soul. How eloquent is this 
reverent gazing at yonder beatific vision ! " 
In strange contrast with the voyage among 
the islets and islands of Norway was the 
voyage among the islands of the Mediter- 
ranean. From the shores of Italy " lying 
low " across the Adriatic to these historic 
islands was a brief and pleasant voyage. 
The sea-girt isles, where Homer and Pindar 
sang in immortal verse ; where Socrates and 
Plato discoursed philosophy ; where Solon 



222 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

and Lycurgus gave wise and wholesome 
laws ; where Agamemnon and Ulysses led 
the heroic arms of Hellas against Troy ; 
where Aristides and Demosthenes were elo- 
quent and just ; where Olympus and the 
Acropolis faced the morning sun, — the en- 
chanted sea-girt isles, with all their storied 
song and history, were embosomed in the 
Central Sea, as of old : but their glory had 
faded ; their famous art was in ruins ; their 
eloquence was dumb ; their bravery was in 
the dust ; their liberty was in chains ; all 
that was distinctive of the Hellenes was to be 
found on the page of history or on their 
dilapidated monuments ; all that was best 
and valuable of these vanished peoples has 
come down to us on the dark stream of time 
through the intervening centuries. One 
sails along the shore of Leucadia whose pro- 
jecting headland is called Sappho's Leap: — 

" The* very spot where Sappho sung 
Her swan-like music, ere she sprung 
(Still holding in that fearful leap 
By her loved lyre) into the deep, 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 223 

And, dying, quenched the fatal fire, 
At once of both her heart and lyre." 

And beyond Leucadia one views the isl- 
and of Ithaca, an upheaved limestone ridge, 
once the home of the great Ulysses, the 
wandering hero whose deeds were sung by 
blind old Homer. 

" As one that for a weary space has lain 

Lulled by the song of Circe and her wine 
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine, 
Where the iEaean Isle forgets the main, 
And only the low lutes of love complain, 
And only shadows of wan lovers pine, 
As such an one were glad to know the brine 
Salt on his lips, and the large air again, 
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech 
Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free 
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers ; 
And through the music of the languid hours, 
They hear like ocean on a western beach 
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey." 

" As the morning sun illumined the rocky 
heights of Salamis, flashed on the Acropo- 
lis, and shone over the hills and plains of 
Attica, we sailed across the very waters 



224 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

where the mighty naval battle was fought 
between the Greeks and Persians more than 
twenty-three centuries ago, into the harbor 
of Piraeus. The curious pointed to a rock 
on our left, where Xerxes, seated on a 
throne, witnessed the defeat of his fleet and 
sadly realized that his costly expedition 
had come to nought." 

The Acropolis is a solitary rock of semi- 
crystalline limestone and red schist, which had 
doubtless been washed for ages by the waves 
of the old Pliocene sea. " The brightest race 
of mankind made it in the bygone centuries 
the point in all the world richest in art. 
As one stands upon it, in the midst of deso- 
late ruins, and " tries " to reconstruct in 
imagination its temples, theatres, and stat- 
ues," he will turn from the storied past, 
and look out upon its environment : " On the 
south is the Saronic Gulf, with Salamis in 
the foreground, and ^Egina, the fabled 
home of the Myrmidons, in the distance. 
A breeze comes up from the sea tempering 
the heat of the sun shining ' through pel- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 225 

lucid air.' On the southeast is Mount 
Hymettus, still renowned as of yore for 
its honey. Away to the northeast and 
north is Mount Pentelicus, where marble 
was quarried for temples and statuary. 
On the northwest is Mount Parnes, dark 
with forests of pine. To the southwest 
appears Mount iEgaleos, near the beauti- 
ful Bay of Salamis. Within this pano- 
rama of distant hills, following the same 
circuit from the southeast round to the 
southwest, one observes the Temple of 
Olympian Jupiter, begun by Pisistratus 
and finished after seven hundred years by 
Hadrian, of whose one hundred and thirty 
columns in Pentelic marble sixteen still re- 
main ; Hadrian's Triumphal Arch, also of 
Pentelic marble, in the Corinthian order ; the 
monument of Lysicrates, called the lantern 
of Demosthenes ; still nearer, the Prytaneum 
or Senate House ; close by, the ruins of the 
Theatre of Bacchus, the proscenium and 
orchestra well preserved, built by Hadrian 
on the site of the ancient Theatre of Diony- 
10* 



226 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

sus ; and right at one's feet the remains 
of a Roman Music Theatre, erected on the 
site of the Odeum 1 of Pericles, of which 
no trace has been discovered. Turning to 
the northward, are seen the remains of the 
Doric Temple of Theseus, with six columns 
on each front, thirteen on each flank, and the 
Tower of the Winds, which still has a sun-dial. 
On the west, reversing the order from the 
nearer to the more distant objects, appear, in 
succession, the Areopagus, the Pnyx, where 
the public assemblies of Athenian citizens 
were held, from which were heard the 
voices of the greatest orators of Greece, 
where St. Paul preached his wonderful ser- 
mon ; the prison of Socrates, and the tomb 
of Philopappos, on the Museum Hill, with 
its ruined walls, beyond which was the 
Academy where Plato taught. In the val- 
ley of the Ilissus, which winds around the 
southern side of the city to the west, may 
be observed the modern villa and gardens 
of Ilissia, on the site of the ancient Lyceum, 
1 Music Hall. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 227 

where Aristotle had his school. On the 
west of the city is the little river Cephis- 
sus, running south, in the valley of which 
the great dramatist Sophocles spent his 
youth. . . . The Acropolis was the citadel 
of Athens. . . . On the highest part of the 
Acropolis stood the Parthenon, the finest 
building ever constructed in the world, of 
which the west side still remains. I counted 
six columns standing entire at the Posticum. 
Eight columns on the front and seventeen 
on the sides of the Cella also remain. The 
Turks used it as a powder-house, and it was 
blown up during a bombardment in 1687. 
Nothing remains of the master work of hu- 
man genius but mournful ruins. My eyes 
have never beheld a sadder sight." 

After traveling through various countries 
of Europe, and visiting the midnight sun, 
as has been described, Dr. Wight returned 
to London, where he made preparations for 
a voyage to the other side of the globe. 
On the first of September, 1887, he left 
England, by steamship, for Australia, pass- 



228 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

ing the Isle of Wight where his ancestors 
lie buried, sailing down the west coast of 
Europe, and between the " pillars of Her- 
cules," one of them the famous Rock of 
Gibraltar, thence between Scylla and Chary b- 
dis, the dread of ancient mariners, — in 
view of smoking ^Etna, and going on, 
through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea 
into the Indian Ocean, in sight of Mount 
Sinai and the spot that marked the well of 
Moses. The heat in the Suez Canal and 
the Red Sea was intense, trying, afflicting, 
— almost intolerable. It was a relief when 
the steamship sailed out upon the great In- 
dian Ocean, where the sea breeze laden with 
vapor absorbed the heat of the sun's rays, 
and made it delightfully cool and pleasant. 
In the mighty steamship, so strongly fash- 
ioned by the hand of man, and guided by 
man's genius, one is borne in safety across 
the sea, as if in the cradle of the deep. On 
and on one goes day after day, under the 
stars, and under the sun, until the broad 
ocean is left behind. A thing of beauty, 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 229 

strength, and speed has circled half of the 
globe. " A great ocean steamer, like the 
' Etruria,' the ' Trave,' the 'Victoria,' or the 
' Ormuz,' is perhaps the most striking sym- 
bol of our wonderful material civilization. 
It is the product of all the ages. When a 
savage of genius, taught by the attempts 
and failures of countless generations 
dimly handed down by tradition, launched 
the first successful canoe, a new era dawned 
upon the struggling race. Unnumbered 
centuries vanished before the bold Phoe- 
nicians sailed through the Pillars of Her- 
cules out upon the western ocean, or the 
daring Norsemen rowed their boats over 
the rough Northern Sea to Iceland. As 
the Roman poet sang : — 

" In oak or triple brass his breast was mailed, 
Who first committed to the ruthless deep 
His fragile bark, nor inly shrank and quailed, 
To hear the headlong south-wind fiercely sweep, 
With northern blasts to wrestle and to rave ; 
Nor feared to face the tristful Hyades, 
And the wild tyrant of the western wave, 
That lifts or calms at will the restless sea." 



MEMORIAL . 7 Q W ^VLGHT. 

The immense ocean is -:: NBed, and Aus- 
tralia and New Zealand are reach e.".. — : 
lands with 1.200 miles of deep sea be: 
them. There the Aryan race has planted 
~ho have applied their master- 
ful genius to subduing nature and making 
her forces subservient to the wants of man : 
when the clouds are empty, they bring up 
water from the depths of the earth to irri- 
jsert and the waste places. And 
on the soil which they make fruitful, they 
plant the civil liberty, and they ad- 

vance and aggrandize the many. A::- 
ing this new civilization, he says : " From 
Aukland I took ship for San Francisco. It 
was my intention to write another chapter, 
giving my impressions of the Pacific Ocean 
and some of its islands, but I was help- 
less during nearly the whole voyage with 
tropical fever. After ten days spent in con- 
valescence on the Pacific coast. I crossed the 
Xorth American continent to my home. I 
had started eastward, and kept going east- 
ward till I returned. The more one travels. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 231 

the more one realizes that all peoples, from 
the beginning of the world, in all lands, 
have been roiling in every field of human 
endeavor, material, mental, and moraL and 
that each generation inherits all the fruits 
and toils of the pas: : • Other men have 
labored and ye are entered into their la- 
bors.' 



XXII. 

In Detroit Dr. Wight had many warm 
friends who gave him a cordial reception, 
after returning from his long, winding jour- 
ney around the world. He had looked for 
rest, and had not found it. Or if he had, 
tropical fever had used up the store of re- 
newed strength. A brief letter from San 
Francisco related how he had been injured 
in a storm at sea, when the great ship stag- 
gered under the blow of a heavy wave, and 
threw him, as well as others, against what- 
ever came in the way : in the mean time he 
seemed to recover slowly from the injury. 

Even while sick and in distress, he began 
to write an account of his travels, giving his 
observations on the society, government, and 
institutions of the various Aryan peoples he 
had visited, and recording their progress to- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 233 

wards a higher civilization and a better civil 
liberty. He entitled his book " A Winding 
Journey around the World." It would be 
impossible to condense the matter of this 
work. The work is already in a condensed 
form. It contains a readable account of his 
earlier journeys abroad, at a time when he 
was looking forward. In the " Winding 
Journey," the views and statements given are 
of remarkable breadth and scope, showing 
the extent of his study, the ripeness of his 
scholarship, and the fertility of his genius, 
as well as the profundity of his learning. 
Of each people, each nation, through whose 
territory, whose land, he journeyed, he gives 
an epitome, describing manners, customs, and 
society ; politics, governments, and institu- 
tions ; science, art, and literature ; in fine, 
noting progress, present condition, and hopes 
of the future. And through all runs one 
great guiding principle, one dominant 
thought, one eternal purpose, one supreme 
law : The evolution of man under the order 
of a universal and unalterable Providence. 



234 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

The first edition of his book of travels was 
published in Detroit, and largely sold by 
subscription in that city. In the meantime, 
the doctor went to Milwaukee, where a large 
circle of friends gave him an enthusiastic 
welcome, and where a large number of copies 
of his book were sold. A contract had been 
made with Houghton, Mifflin and Co., to 
publish a new edition in the east. They 
brought out the book in an improved form. 
And one can always admire their excellent 
work. 

The severe labor of writing this book and 
the effects of tropical fever exhausted his 
strong constitution and broke down his 
health. Yet it must be remembered that he 
had been a ceaseless worker, a laborious 
student, a voluminous writer, giving himself 
no rest for many years, knowing that this 
life is short and trying to make the most of 
it. In time the strongest natures and the 
most vigorous constitutions yield to the in- 
roads made by the stress and strain of inces- 
sant toil. He was no exception to toiling, 
perishing mortality : " And he, shall he, 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 235 

Who loved, who suffered countless ills, 
Who battled for the true, the just, 
Be blown about the desert dust, 
Or sealed within the iron hills ? ' ' 

The author of this biography, knowing 
that his brother was not very well before his 
long journey around the globe, had advised 
him not to go over into Asia. After his 
voyage to Australia he knew by letters that 
he had not become strong again ; but he 
was not informed as to the serious changes 
that had taken place in his health. He had 
expected him to come to his home in Brook- 
lyn in a few weeks after the publication of 
the book of travels. He had written in the 
mean time, and had received answer that the 
traveler and writer had still some tropical 
fever. At that time some advice was sent, 
as well as such a thing can be done. For 
it is very difficult to give advice, without 
seeing and examining the patient. Soon 
after came a copy of the new booh. It had 
been finished, and was well done. Its author 



236 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

wrote that he was going to Milwaukee : this 
brought excitement, when rest was needed ; 
the fever burned anew ; and then he has- 
tened back to Detroit. 

One day in October, 1888, came the an- 
nouncement that Dr. O. W. Wight was ill, 
perhaps seriously ill, that he seemed to be 
slowly losing strength. He had returned 
from Milwaukee, and had suffered from a 
severe chill, when fever had followed with 
exhaustion aad prostration. Kind friends 
cared for him, and in a few days, with my 
consent, removed him to Harper's Hospital, 
where he had everything that medical skill 
and good nursing could do for him. In the 
meantime word was sent as to his condition, 
and soon the request for me to hasten to 
Detroit. In as much haste as possible the 
journey was undertaken. Strange thoughts 
and feelings came to mind and heart, as the 
steamcar sped on. The changing day turned 
into the changeful night. And then the sun 
of a new day rose clear and bright. In 
the crisp air and in the forenoon light, the 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 237 

steamcar curved along the shore of Lake 
Erie beyond Buffalo. The same lake is 
there, but the restless water is not the same, 
as in the past. One is carried back in mem- 
ory through the years that have gone, and 
faint outlines of half-forgotten things strug- 
gle to reappear ; a dim picture of vanished 
scenes rises before the eyes, and a composite 
made of reminiscences and the present is 
more like a dream than a reality. The car 
glides on towards the mist and roar of the 
eternal cataract. The bridge, with which 
the genius of man has spanned the walled 
river, is crossed, and we tarry by the ex- 
panding, rushing, falling, roaring waters. 
They seem to stand for a moment upon the 
terrible brink, and then, like the south wind, 
plunge headlong into the turmoil of the 
mighty chasm below. One has strange im- 
pressions and feelings made by the acceler- 
ating velocity of the compact mass as it 
curves and falls ceaselessly into the rising 
spray and seething foam, as if the spirit of 
the water had become angry and was throw- 



238 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

ing itself eternally into the abyss of destruc- 
tion, and had then risen into a new life, 
hurrying and rushing onward toward the 
whirling and hurling rapids, to beat and 
lash itself into utter exhaustion, and thence 
flowing on in the majestic and placid river 
to the next inland sea. One could feel as 
well as see the motion of the great cataract, 
in which gravic force is correlated into the 
pulverization of the solid rocks. I had seen 
the exhibition of this mighty power and maj- 
esty before. But now other and different 
thoughts came to my mind : I had studied 
the mighty forces that move the sun and his 
dependent family of planets ; that stretch 
across the abyss from world to world, and 
from star to star ; that upheave the crust of 
the earth and the envelope of the sun ; that 
extend through the illimitable spaces of the 
universe, and turn to bind all things into 
one, under universal Providence ; and I had 
thought, and was then thinking, upon the in- 
finite expansion of eternity beyond, with all 
its unfathomed mysteries ; and then over- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 239 

shadowed by the magnitude of these greater 
things, the awful cataract seemed to diminish 
until it was a brook-fall fit to turn a mimic 
water-wheel for a truant schoolboy ; and yet 
the very spirit of immensity and eternity 
would anon rise toward the overarching 
bow, and force itself to appear in the very 
midst of the waters which seemed to be fall- 
ing eternally. 

On reaching Detroit, I at once drove to 
Harper's Hospital, and saw the sick man 
with conflicting emotions. It was my desire 
to have him get well, and so there seemed 
to be some hope. But after consultation 
with his good physician, Dr. Book, it did not 
seem as if he could live much longer. The 
strong man was broken into incurable weak- 
ness. But the feeble, feverish body still 
held the same courageous heart, the same in- 
domitable spirit, the same soul that was obe- 
dient to God and his laws. Time was not 
now looking backward: it was still the 
watchword of a heroic life — ever forward. 
I asked him if he had anything to say to 



240 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

me ; with great effort he said slowly, the 
words standing far apart, " There are two 
expansions." Then I knew that the hour of 
his departure was at hand, that his life here 
was closing, and that it was opening to that 
which lies beyond. I knew well his modes 
of thought and the way in which he viewed 
things : I knew he was contemplating the 
expansion which lies beyond time and space. 
He told me by signs that he did not desire 
to get well, that his life had been all labor, 
and that he wished to go. And so I laid his 
head upon the pillow, and he seemed to be 
satisfied. 

And so our ceaseless toil ends in a hand- 
ful of dust, — with a hope of immortality 
beyond. And it were well to have it even 
so, for so God hath shaped it. Yet it 
seemed as if fortune had flung me back 
through all the fleeting vanished years, 
which had been crushed into one supreme 
moment without pity. Again the two eter- 
nities meet. And now the work of one is 
done. At last rest has come to weary feet, 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 241 

— Fame ! so poor, so little, and so low, one 
could not hear her song, — it were better 
yet to live, if rightly so, even though it 
were here ; but it were better yet to live be- 
yond, where that which causes death must die, 
and leave our better life wholly emancipated. 

" But when those others, one by one, 
Withdrew themselves from me and night, 
And in the house light after light 
Went out, and I was all alone, 

" A hunger seized my heart ; I read 
Of that glad year that once had been, 
In those fallen leaves which kept their green, 
The noble letters of the dead : 

' ' And strangely on the silence broke 
The silent-speaking words, and strange 
Was love's dumb cry defying change 
To test his worth ; and strangely spoke 

" The faith, the vigor, bold to dwell 
On doubts that drive the coward back, 
And keen, thro' wordy snares to track 
Suggestion to her inmost cell. 

" So word by word, and line by line, 
The dead man touch'd me from the past, 
11 



242 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

And all at once it seemed at last 
His living soul was flashed on mine, 

" And mine in his was wound, and whirl'd 
About empyreal heights of thought, 
And came on that which is, and caught 
The deep pulsations of the world. 

" iEonian music measuring out 
The steps of Time, the shocks of Chance, 
The blows of Death." 




^Tj/^J'tJ^W^, -«-2>. 



HELIOTYPE PRIMING CO. BOSTON. 



XXIII. 

Thus lived and wrought a self-made man, 
— and so his labor ceased. All that is 
mortal of him lies under the sod of Green- 
wood, at rest. He was placed in kindred 
dust by loving hands. He laid down by 
the wayside, where the stone casts a shadow 
behind the sun of the afternoon of life. 
His pillow was the weary and pathetic dust 
of silent suffering. And yet it may be, it 
must be, best. This brave and tender soul 
loved the good, the beautiful, the true. 
And now he rests beyond every storm of 
life. His spirit has vanished into the 
viewless eternity. How brief the stay, the 
storm, the struggle here ! How endless is 
the eternity beyond ! And yet we linger a 
little while to recount some of the things 
he did, — a few of the many he did so well. 



244 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

Union College conferred on him the de- 
gree of Master of Arts, while he resided at 
Rye. He had not been educated at any 
college or university. This was a timely 
recognition of his learning, his attainments, 
and his success in the field of literature. 
About the same time, the degree of Master 
of Arts was given him hj Yale College. This 
distinction he had earned by his own efforts. 
It was in some way a compensation for the 
studies and toils of his youth, when he had 
to work his own way in every field of know- 
ledge and learning. These degrees were 
not conferred as a matter of course, when 
there had been three years of waiting af- 
ter a four years' curriculum. They were 
given because they were deserved, on ac- 
count of the merit, the learning, and the suc- 
cess of the recipient. These honors were 
gratifying to his laudable ambition. He 
had conquered the fields of learning up to 
the lines set by these deserved honors, and 
had gone a long way beyond them. But 
they were some encouragement, — an in- 
centive to work in the future. 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 245 

That lie was ambitious, there can be no 
doubt. Take away all that the word am- 
bition means and implies and it would be 
necessary to rewrite the history of the 
world. And when it had been rewritten, 
we would find our historian under the spell 
of ambition, — and his history would be of 
little worth. The ambition that leads to 
the performance of great deeds, that aims 
at the liberty, elevation, and happiness of 
the many, must not be thrown away. It 
is neither criminal nor sinful : it is praise- 
worthy to the extent that it lifts us up and 
draws others unto us. This was the nature 
of his ambition. It was this that moved 
him to his ceaseless labor. It was this that 
sustained him to the last. It was this that 
inspired his vision when the end came. 

That he longed for fame was certainly 
true. To aspire to eminence was no new 
thing. Others had so longed and so as- 
pired. To be a leader among men, not 
from material power, but from intellectual 
force, was laudable and desirable. Have 



246 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

there not been a long line of worthies, as we 
traverse the centuries, from Plato to Des- 
cartes, from Aristotle to Bacon, from Thucyd- 
ides to Gibbon, from Democritus to Darwin, 
from Homer to Shakespeare, whose names 
and works have been remembered? Their 
fame has extended into all lands. They are 
the world's inheritance. A new motion has 
been given to society, government, and civil- 
ization, in all lands, because these men have 
lived. Such fame as they have achieved, if 
rightly and fully earned, was not foreign to 
his wish. He desired to be in the company 
of the great, the good, and the wise. 

All along his eventful life he has been as- 
sociated with the press. No one knew bet- 
ter how much has been done for the world 
by the invention of printing. He appreci- 
ated how liberty and happiness increased by 
the diffusion of knowledge. Something of 
what has happened to the advantage of man 
during the brief existence of the press may 
be seen in the following words taken from 
one of his speeches : — 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 247 

" In regard to the influence on society of 
the mingled good and evil of the press, it 
may be remarked that the former is per- 
manent and the latter transitory. The good 
that men do is not interred with their bones. 
The evil that they do lives not long after 
them. The Almighty has so attuned the 
soul of man that it responds with tones of 
harmony to every touch of truth and beauty. 
On the other hand the touch of falsehood 
and deformity jangle it like sweet bells out 
of tune. Good is eternal. Evil is a perish- 
able accident. The air of Heaven is so con- 
stituted that it transmits harmonies and ar- 
rests discords. In like manner, human 
society is so fashioned by the hand of its 
Maker that it rejects the evil poured out to 
it from the press and absorbs the good as 
nutriment into its very growth. . . . 

" In conclusion, it may be said without any 
exaggeration that the wonderful progress 
of modern society dates from the invention 
of printing. In the Oriental fable a voice 
that was frozen into silence subsequently 



248 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

thawed and became audible. The lips of an- 
tiquity were dumb in the chilly atmosphere 
of the Dark Ages, but they were warmed into 
eloquence by the rising sun of the Renais- 
sance, after Tyndall had printed the Bible. 
The press restored to mankind the wisdom of 
the ancient world. Thanks to the scholar- 
ship and the invention of Germany, the lyr- 
ics of Pindar and Horace, the deeper melody 
of Homer and Virgil, the trumpet tones of 
liberty in Demosthenes and Cicero, the sci- 
ence of Aristotle, the thought of Plato, the 
compact narratives of Thucydides and Taci- 
tus, the Philosophy of Greece and the ju- 
risprudence of Eome, are brought within the 
reach of the humblest scholar. The press 
embalms for us the souls of the dead. The 
spirits of Dante and Shakespeare, of Leo- 
nardo da Vinci and Leibnitz, of Bacon and 
Descartes, of Cervantes and Milton, of 
Spinoza and La Place, hover this side of 
the eternal world in the mysterious drapery 
of printed words. 

" I pause on the threshold of a theme as 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 249 

vast as the world's literature. At a ban- 
quet given in honor of rare eloquence and 
political genius, it has seemed to me best to 
recall the several features of a subject that 
lies at the roots of our government and is 
interwoven with the destiny of the Repub- 
lic." . . . 

In his literary productions, he was clear, 
definitive, incisive, earnest, fearless, honest. 
He has been a voluminous writer. And the 
guiding princijDle in all was truth : the truth 
was better than any man ; it was higher than 
anything which man did. His work was 
like that of the knight-errant : to set things 
right that had gone wrong; to aid in the 
evolution of man to a higher good. We may 
listen to what he says of William Words- 
worth : " He spoke as the unsophisticated 
child always speaks, from the heart. Ser- 
pent critics might hiss, but his time was too 
precious to waste with them. He who is 
conversing with angels feels not the bite of 
vipers. He has other than carnal weapons 
with which to bruise their heads. Born 
11* 



250 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

among the hills, the favorite of nature, what 
did Wordsworth care for Jeffrey's ridicule, or 
the neglect of contemporaries ? More than 
half a century he wrote and lived poetry. 
Hills and mountains put on for him looks 
of benediction ; Nature smiled upon him 
in flowers, and sung to him her love with 
warbling tongues. He could afford to be 
laughed at by the foolish, to be hooted at by 
literary owls. What had he to do with the 
world's approbation ? He was a born poet, 
and could not listen to the cry of critic or 
multitude. Like a benign spirit, he brooded 
over the world of affection and sentiment, 
and in being true to these, he was true to 
himself. His voice has been borne on the 
bosom of the mountain wind, and already 
the ear of humanity is ravished by its kindly 
tone. An age of imitation never recognizes 
the inspired teacher who is true to man in 
being true to his own nature. Just so far as 
the spirit of the times is false will the true 
poet be neglected. The one who tacks to 
catch the popular breeze may run with 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 251 

rapidity, — alas, not often heavenwards. 
When the multitude are repenting, woe to 
those who have received their greatest fa- 
vors, and joy to those who have raised heroic 
and prophetic voices of warning and true 
guidance ! Happy the age in which a strong, 
devout soul converses with the spirit of the 
universe in the hearing of men ! Words of 
bitterness and of jest may be thoughtlessly 
uttered, but many shall learn to worship ; 
seeing the light of consecrated genius that 
shines in truth and sincerity, they shall 
learn to glorify Him whose most perfect 
image is the divinest poet." 

And here we revert to philosophy ; in a 
few words the evolution of the human mind 
is pictured : " The philosopher, starting with 
full faith in the integrity of his intellectual 
nature, believes that he has knowledge, not 
merely of his own sensational states, but also 
of the existence of things, as consciousness 
clearly attests. This faith in reason is com- 
mon to all philosophers. Philosophy, in its 
strictest meaning, is the thinking of thought, 



252 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

a science of the human mind whose veracity 
is an object of belief. When mind is turned 
inward upon itself, when it applies itself to 
the observances of its own powers, when it 
searches after the laws of its own manifes- 
tations, when it watches itself in the act of 
acquiring knowledge, when it follows itself 
through the various operations of sensation, 
perception, reasoning, doubting, believing, 
etc., then the work of philosophizing has 
been seriously begun. That philosophy 
should at once be achieved, that it should 
leap into existence without defect, without 
blemish, complete and divinely beautiful, 
like Athene, or Wisdom, from the brain of 
Zeus, or the Supreme Intelligence, no man 
could expect. Every science has been the 
growth of ages. It is no more wonderful 
that opinions have differed in regard to 
questions of philosophy than that they have 
differed in regard to questions of chemistry. 
The chemist is certain in regard to some 
things; and as much may be said of the 
philosopher. The earliest cultivators of any 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 253 

science find out a few facts, which are none 
the less facts for being mingled with many- 
errors. When a science is more fully de- 
veloped and fairly achieved, then a wise 
historical retrospect may clearly discriminate 
between error and fact, and point out the 
progress that has been made by decrease of 
the former, and increase of the latter. Phi- 
losophy, the most difficult of all sciences, 
must, in the nature of things, be the first 
to be established, the last to be perfected. 
Scientific investigation, of whatever kind, 
can proceed only with the aid of intellectual 
instruments given by philosophy. It must 
always be remembered that in the simplest 
physical sciences the mind is the investiga- 
tor ; unless it strictly obey laws which are 
derived solely from itself, it will arrive at 
nothing or error. Without the Greek met- 
aphysicians and the schoolmen, there had 
been no modern science. Science sometimes 
shows her folly and ingratitude by ignor- 
ing her super-sensual helper, without whose 
aid she could not even know that a phe- 



254 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

nomenon has a cause, and would thus lose 
the primary stimulus of her wonderful ac- 
tivity." 

We pass from the philosophic and the 
poetic to the pathetic realism of storm and 
disaster, when the winds are let loose and 
drive the abode of the mariner to wreckage 
and destruction. And so it has been, and 
so it will be again ; some are lost and some 
are saved. Safe is the open sea, and safe is 
the solid land : but where sea and land meet 
and wrestle, danger and peril wander up and 
down, as if they made the mournful music of 
the troubled shore. We give only the pic- 
ture of the wreck and loss : " On the seventh 
of May, 1850, they embarked on board the 
' Elizabeth ' for the New World, leaving be- 
hind them the blackened fields of revolution, 
and that Rome which has been the arena of 
contending civilizations during a period of 
more than a hundred generations of men. 
The only other passengers were a young 
Italian girl and Mr. Horace Sumner, of 
Boston. Captain Harty died on the third 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 255 

of June, off Gibraltar, with the confluent 
small -pox. The mate took the command. 
Ten days after, little Angelino sickened with 
the same frightful disease, and barely sur- 
vived. Alas ! when misfortunes come, they 
come not single spies, but in fierce battal- 
ions. July fifteenth the barque was off 
the Jersey coast, somewhere between Cape 
May and Barnegat. It was about noon. 
Trunks were packed, in expectation of land- 
ing next morning. About nine o'clock in 
the evening the breeze rose to a gale. Sails 
were close-reefed, but currents and tempest 
drove the vessel faster than any knew to- 
wards the sandbars of Long Island. About 
four o'clock the next morning she struck. 
Her broadside was exposed to the merciless 
blows of the enraged sea. The brine rushed 
through the broken bottom. The crash of 
falling timbers and the roar of waves that 
swept over her were fearfully mingled. The 
foaming spray quenched the lights, and the 
cabin-door was unhinged by the mad-rushing 
water. The words : ' We must die ! Let 



256 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

us die calmly then,' were shrilly uttered 
above the heavy thunder of the ocean's roar. 
Prayer gushed up in agony from despairing 
hearts. Kindly and encouraging words of 
parting were spoken ; and messages, stamped 
with the priceless value of dying utterance, 
were intrusted to each other for absent 
friends, if perchance some one might sur- 
vive. The crew were on the forecastle, and 
the passengers in the cabin. Across the 
vessel amidships, between them, the heavy 
seas were at measured intervals sweeping. 
Mrs. Harty, the wife of the deceased cap- 
tain, beckoned at the cabin door, and was 
observed by Davis, the mate. It was about 
seven in the morning, and the cabin threat- 
ened to break up. The sailors were ordered 
to the rescue, but refused to go. Davis, 
holding fast to the bulwarks, and stopping 
while the seas combed over him, crossed to 
the passengers. Two of the brave sailors 
followed him. The passengers with great 
difficulty and peril were conveyed to the 
forecastle. On the shore, not far off, were 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 257 

wreckers, heartless as the dreary sand-hills 
washed by the cold waves. One sailor, 
aided by a life-preserver, reached the strand. 
Another, supported by a spar, followed in 
safety. Mr. Sumner made the attempt, and 
was swallowed up by the ocean. Mrs. Harty, 
seated upon a plank, holding fast by handles 
of rope, supported by Davis and a brave 
sailor, reached the shore almost lifeless. 
Margaret refused to be separated from her 
husband and child. The day wore away, 
and at length, about three o'clock, most of 
the crew jumped overboard, only part of 
whom gained the beach. Four seamen yet 
remained with the passengers. The cabin 
had gone, and the stern of the ship had sunk 
out of sight. At length the foremast fell, 
carrying with it the deck and all upon it. 
Two of the seamen clung to the mast and 
were saved ; the rest were lost. The child 
touched the shore of the New World, warm 
but lifeless. Margaret sank at once. When 
last seen, she had been seated at the foot of 
the foremast, still clad in her white night- 



258 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

dress, with her hair fallen loose upon her 
shoulders. It was over — that twelve hours' 
communion face to face with death ! It was 
over ! and the prayer was granted, That Os- 
soli, Angelino, and I may go together *, and 
that the anguish may be brief." In these 
words we have a vivid picture of the fate 
of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, than which none 
can be more pathetic, none more tragic. 
And it was none the less tragic, none the 
less pathetic, because the prayer seemed to 
be answered. To go through the wreck and 
the storm, — leaving the roar of the tempest 
and meeting the sweetness of the silence, — 
what a fate ! 

Science, philosophy, realism, and duty in- 
spire the following paragraph, in which is 
aptly described the dual obligation of the 
physician to heal and teach : "In our pro- 
fession, we have to deal not only with form 
and structure, but also with the visitations 
of Providence in the form of disease. Man, 
by his ignorance and waywardness, has vio- 
lated the laws of the Almighty, and the con- 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 259 

sequences of sucli isolation are visited upon 
him, involving the innocent as well as the 
guilty. Fearful problems of life are there- 
fore presented to us at every step in our 
course. It is our business to perpetually 
teach as well as heal. Upon our diligence, 
caution, promptness, soundness of judgment, 
often hang the issues of life and death. We 
tread among open graves, while suppliants 
around us extend their trembling hands to 
us as ministers of God's healing art, revealed 
through patient investigation to a perishing 
world. It is a sacrilege to approach the 
great work without due preparation. The 
dearest interests of the living are committed 
to our keeping, and no man whose honor is 
not fire-proof should be allowed to wear the 
badge or hold the diploma of the medical 
profession. Moreover, it should not be for- 
gotten that a true practitioner will seek the 
reward that comes from a consciousness of 
duty performed as well as the compensation 
of material gain." 



XXIV. 

" My heart leaps up when I behold 
A rainbow in the sky ; 
So was it when my life began ; 
So is it now I am a man ; 
So let it be when I grow old, 
Or let me die." 

And so there comes an hour to every one 
that lives, — a momentary fragment of time, 
— when all that eye can see, or ear can 
hear, or hand can touch, seems like the 
shadow of a summer cloud as it speeds 
upon the shore, — and when there is a 
vision of things new and strange, — an 
inspiration of " something deeply inter- 
fused," of something besides the transient 
forms that meet us on every hand : and 
what this spirit is we do not know. And 
when our eyes, and ears, and hands are 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 261 

weary, we rest and think, — and then we 
say : these motions that our common senses 
feel are only fragment of the eternal mo- 
tions that a higher sense reveals. 

" Strong Sou of God, immortal Love, 
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face, 
By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
Believing where we cannot prove. " 

The earth, and moon, and sun, that rise 
and fall, and all the wandering host of 
worlds beyond, as turned and swung by cos- 
mic law, in all their complicated and endless 
motions, are revelations to the seer, in every 
clime, in every land. They are but shad- 
ows of things to be ; and as they move, 
they tend to one far-off event ; and the 
story that they tell to him who is the seer 
must needs be true, and runs in words 
which make it clear that the universe of 
God is one. That two there cannot be : 
all worlds, all suns, are one ; under the do- 
minion of universal law, all things evolve ; 
a providence of good unfolds the smallest 
flower and turns the greatest sun. 



262 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

Inspiration and revelation have come to 
all peoples, in all lands, and in all times. 
To be a seer of the truth and a revealer of 
it to men is not an exceptional fact which 
has taken place now and then, here and 
there. The mind and soul of man has 
yearned for truth and life all through the 
centuries and the ages that have vanished. 
So they will in all times to come. Truly 
the Spirit of God interfuses all souls, and 
comes as a witness to every heart. But 
most of all to wise and holy men is his 
presence known, — those who have tried to 
fill the soul and mind and heart of man 
with faith, hope, and love. These men have 
lived in every land, have taught in every 
clime, have raised up those who fall in every 
time. It is they who see the truth, and 
teach the sons of men. 

Oriental precept tells us that the wise 
Confucius divined the law and revealed it 
unto his brothers who were blind, to guide 
them in the devious ways of life. The gen- 
tle Prince Siddhartha, whose stainless shrines 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 263 

are daily overlaid with flowers, in whom 
the light of Asia shines, reveals a hope and 
refuge, greater than any one can tell, to 
countless weary hearts. The strong and 
devout soul of Socrates still converses with 
the Spirit of the universe, in the hearing of 
men who care to listen to that voice which 
seemed to reveal the very source of inspira- 
tion. Daily with the Father communed 
the blessed Son, whose sermon on the mount 
*is a deeper inspiration and a mightier 
revelation than the world has elsewhere 
seen or heard. And it seems that all true 
prophets since the world began, and all 
true poets in the vanishing years, are seers, 
inspired to make revelations of the truth to 
man. 

That there was an inspiration, as well as a 
revelation, in some way vouchsafed to him, 
we cannot doubt, who knew him well. It 
was not in the low and vulgar way of com- 
mon men, but from an insight — a seeing — 
into the universe of man and nature, where 
lives and moves the eternal Spirit. That 



264 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

we may know in some sense how this was so, 
we may paraphrase the thoughts of the poet 
" On the banks of the Wye, while he was 
visiting the ruins of Tintern Abbey: " — 

In his boyish days nature was to him all 
in all. In after years he could not paint 
what then he was. It was then the sound- 
ing cataract like a passion haunted him 
with the enchanting music of its waterfall. 
The forms and colors of the high rock, the 
lofty mountain, and the deep wood, then 
awakened an appetite for Him who shaped 
the world, — and shaped it long ago. A 
feeling of a Presence and a love for what 
the eye could see burned and agitated all the 
elevated thoughts within. All the aching- 
joys and all the dizzy raptures of that time 
are passed. The shore on which they rose is 
"lying low." Other gifts were his, of more 
abundant recompense and greater power. 
For in the passing years he had learned 
to look on nature, not as in the hour of 
thoughtless youth, but often hearing the 
still, sad music of humanity. It was not 



MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 265 

harsh, nor did it grate upon the ear, though 
it was of ample power to chasten and sub- 
due. 

" And I have felt 

A presence which disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion, and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thoughts 
And rolls through all things." 

That he had faith in this life is well at- 
tested by what he said and did and wrote on 
occasions too many to enumerate. And it 
was all to him a very real and earnest thing. 
To such natures life is always intensely 
realistic, even in its moods of elevated 
thoughts. And that he believed in a future, 
another world vaguely expressed by the 
word eternity, he has expressly told us. 

When he mentioned some great pictures 
he collected at Rome and at Dresden, the 
impressions made by these " precious pic- 
12 



266 MEMORIAL OF 0. W. WIGHT. 

tures " could be recalled in sleepless nights ; 
they were seen as imperishable, and with 
the expectation of being carried "into the 
next world." 

That he was in youth a dreamer — a philo- 
sopher, and Plato his master — may be true, 
but that in later years he became a practical 
realist was shown by his works. And yet 
the solution of every practical problem, as 
it came to thought and hand, was touched 
by a wise philosophy, beautified by a poetic 
imagination, and vivified by pathetic elo- 
quence, — until its shadow fell over into the 
hereafter. And its fruition kept company 
with the good, which is eternal, — and part- 
ed with evil, which " is a perishable acci- 
dent." 






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